Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Linux Permissions and sudo
Linux restricts some actions that might cause damage to other users. As such, some com-
mands will not work unless you have the appropriate privileges. On some distributions, you
need to switch to being the user
root
(the administrator account) before running the com-
mand requiring more privileged access. Other distributions will allow selected users to pre-
fix the command with
sudo
. The following instructions assume that your user account has
been set up to use
sudo
. If not, type
su
in the terminal first to become root.
7
If Linux has automounted the card, you need to unmount it first by typing
sudo
umount /dev/sd
X
.
8
Double-check that you have the correct device by typing
sudo fdisk -l /dev/sd
X
.
Check that the size displayed matches the size of the card that you inserted.
9
When you are absolutely sure you have the right label for the card, type the following
(replacing
sd
X
with the name you found in step 6) to copy the image across to the
card. (This step could take about 15-30 minutes, so be patient.)
dd if=2012-10-28-wheezy-raspbian.img of=/dev/sd
X
10
Type
sudo sync
before removing the card to ensure all the data is written to the card
and is not still being buffered.
Creating an SD Card with OS X
With OS X, it's easiest to create the SD card image from the command line.
Although the Macintosh normally uses drag and drop for many operations, there is a way to
get “under the hood” to perform unusual operations. Your gateway to doing this is an appli-
cation called
Terminal.
This is usually found in the Utilities folder, within the Applications
folder. A quick way to find it is to hold down the ⌘ key and press the spacebar. This will open
the Spotlight search window. Type
terminal
and then press Enter to open the Terminal
application.
To create an SD card, follow these steps:
1
Start a terminal.
2
Use the
cd
command to change to the directory containing the file you downloaded. A
quick way to do this is to type
cd
followed by a space and then drag the folder contain-
ing the file into the Terminal window. This will automatically fill in the rest of the com-
mand with the pathname of that folder. Then press Enter to perform the command.
