Setting up a Raspberry Pi (with Bash-it)

I’ve been using a Raspberry Pi Model B as a file server and backup in my studio for the past 3 years. It’s connected to an old 1TB harddrive and ran btsync (I now switched to Syncthing) and is basically my replacement for Dropbox – except unlike Dropbox I own all the computers my data is on. No NSA backdoors, and cheap!

I found I use my ol’ Raspberry Pi so much stuff that I could take advantage of the upgrades in the Raspberry Pi 2. Unfortunately simply swapping the SD card didn’t work, so I had to install fresh.

Here’s how I got started, before installing Syncthing (I may post about that later). This is how I setup a Raspberry Pi. You don’t have to do this, this is just what I do.

Get Raspbian on an SD Card

I use MakeMyPi for this. It’s fast and includes stuff I like, such as git, ssh keys, and wireless configuration.

Upgrade the install

sudo rpi-update && sudo apt-get -y update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -y
sudo shutdown -r now

Install tmux and htop

Very handy stuff. Check it out if you’re not already using it regularly.

sudo apt-get install tmux htop

Install bash-it

Go home

cd ~/

Clone the bash-it files. (You’ll need to have installed Git already of course)

git clone https://github.com/Bash-it/bash-it.git
mv bash-it/ .bash_it/
~/.bash_it/install.sh

These are the bash-it completions, aliases, and plugins I use, or aspire to.

bash-it enable completion git
bash-it enable completion dirs
bash-it enable completion defaults
bash-it enable alias general
bash-it enable plugin history
bash-it enable plugin dirs
bash-it enable plugin extract
bash-it enable plugin base
bash-it enable plugin git

Also, I like fasd, but barely understand it. And it really bogged down the old Pi. I may reinstall it on the Pi2 and give it another shot.

Add my own bash stuff

cd ~/.bash_it/custom/
touch mine.bash
nano mine.bash

Paste in the following, as you like

## GREPS
    function hgrep()
    {
     builtin history | grep "$*"
    }

    function lgrep()
    {
     ls -alh | grep "$*"
    }

Note: bash-it has some similar ls+grep alias, but this is what I remember

## ALIASES
    alias lsss='ls -lht | less'
    alias cdslvr='cd /media/silver'
    alias cdsync='cd /media/silver/st'

The last two are really specific to me, but may inspire you.

## UPDATE
    function update()
        {
         sudo rpi-update &&  sudo apt-get -y update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -y
        }

I don’t know why I wrote the above and below as a function – it probably could be an alias. Maybe I had some future plan I forgot.

# Shutdown
    function restart()
        {
         sudo shutdown -rF now
        }

The -F flag forces fsck which is used to “check and repair a Linux filesystem”. That’s good for that 1TB drive I have attached.

# History
# all via http://www.eriwen.com/bash/effective-shorthand/

# Don't put duplicate lines in the history
export HISTCONTROL=ignoredups

# Store a lot history entries in a file for grep-age
shopt -s histappend
export HISTFILE=~/long_history
export HISTFILESIZE=50000

# No reason not to save a bunch in history
# Takes up several more MBs of RAM now, oOOOooh
export HISTSIZE=9999

# Ignore dupe commands and other ones you don't care about
export HISTIGNORE="&:[ ]*:exit"

Note: bash-it adds some good history search stuff as well.

Decrease GPU Ram

I don’t use the gui of this RPi, though I may connect it someday. Or I may remove it entirely. In the meantime, I decreased the GPU Ram to give it back to the CPU.

sudo nano /boot/config.txt

Added this to the bottom

# Decreasing GPU Ram, to increase general Ram.
# source:  https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/673/what-is-the-optimum-split-of-$
# The value can be 16, 64, 128 or 256
# 16MB =  almost zero graphical power. Enough GPU memory to render the screen, not much else
gpu_mem=16

Then I go from there. Hopefully this is useful to you.