Raspberry Pi A User Manual page 53

C H A P T E R 2
G E T T I N G S T A R T E D W I T H T H E R A S P B E R R Y P I
Flashing from Linux
If your current PC is running a variant of Linux already, you can use the
contents of the image file out to the SD card. This is a text-interface program operated from the
command prompt, known as a terminal in Linux parlance. Follow these steps to flash the SD card:
1. Open a terminal from your distribution's applications menu.
2. Plug your blank SD card into a card reader connected to the PC.
3. Type
sudo fdisk -l
device address:
/dev/sdX
systems with integrated SD card readers may use the alternative format
—if this is the case, remember to change the target in the following instruc-
mmcblkX
tions accordingly.
4. Use cd to change to the directory with the .img file you extracted from the Zip archive.
5. Type
sudo dd if=imagefilename.img of=/dev/sdX bs=2M
imagefilename.img
Replace
imagefilename.img
archive. This step takes a while, so be patient! During flashing, nothing will be shown
on the screen until the process is fully complete (see Figure 2-10).
to see a list of disks. Find the SD card by its size, and note the
, where is a letter identifying the storage device. Some
X
to the SD card connected to the device address from step 3.
with the actual name of the file extracted from the Zip
command to write the
dd
/dev/
to write the file
37
Figure 2-10:
Flashing the SD
card using the
dd command
in Linux