Creative Technology

3. Writing Raspbian to an SD Card

19 Jan 2018

Note: this information is very similar to the information on this page.

  1. download the Raspbian jessie lite image I prepared for the class (it's called sc_raspbian_stretch_01152018.img.gz) from dropbox to your computer (look for the link via email)

  2. download and install the SDFormatter from here

  3. plug your microSD card into an SD card adapter and insert into your laptop

  4. open SDFormatter, which should automatically identify your SD card, and select Overwrite Format, then click the Format button. After a while the application will tell you that it is done erasing all data from the SD card

  5. with SD card plugged in to your computer enter diskutil list in the terminal to locate the 8GB SD card

    example output:

    /dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage HD                      499.4 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1 (internal, virtual):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS HD                     +499.0 GB   disk1
                                 Logical Volume on disk0s2
                                 F0EE8AE2-966C-4461-8AB7-DAC4A66164B5
                                 Unencrypted
/dev/disk2 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *8.0 GB     disk2
   1:             Windows_FAT_16 RECOVERY                1.2 GB     disk2s1
   2:                      Linux                         33.6 MB    disk2s5
   3:             Windows_FAT_32 boot                    66.1 MB    disk2s6
   4:                      Linux                         6.7 GB     disk2s7

  6. unmount the SD card so we can do write our new image to it by entering the following command into the terminal:

    diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk<disk# from diskutil>

    for example:

    diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2

  7. next, uncompress and copy the data from the .img.gz file to your SD card by entering the following in the terminal:

    gunzip --stdout nameofimage.img.gz | sudo dd bs=1m of=/dev/disk2

    for example:

    gunzip --stdout rpi_fieldwork.img.gz | sudo dd bs=1m of=/dev/disk2

    this takes a VERY LONG TIME, so go get a cup of coffee or take a walk or something.

  8. Eventually you should see something like this in the terminal confirming that dd is done writing the.img file to the SD card:

    3833+0 records in
3833+0 records out
4019191808 bytes transferred in 1642.354445 secs (2447213 bytes/sec)

  9. eject the SD card from your computer with the following command:

    sudo diskutil eject /dev/disk2

  10. put the SD card into your pi, plug power cable in, and confirm that it boots up (if the ACT LED is flashing green than it has successfully booted up)

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