My New System Checklist

I recently had need to create a new Raspbian system for a project and decided to record all the things I did after the system image first boots. Frequently, I forget one or two of these, so this will become a checklist that I follow when I create a new system.

There are many guides to creating a system for the Raspberry Pi and this post is not an attempt to create another. I am putting this here for my own reference as much as to share.  To make it helpful to beginners, I have added some explanations.  You may prefer nano over vi as the file editor.

Please feel free to use the comments section to let people know what customization you like to make for your Pi systems.

Load image as usual
raspi-config runs first time
- expand file system
- Internationalization -> set locale -> TZ = US-Eastern
- Internationalization -> Keyboard = English(US)
- advanced -> hostname (RasPi-##-Purpose)
- advanced -> mem split 16 for GPU
- advanced -> enable SPI and I2C and Serial
reboot, and log in as pi (raspberry)

CPU overclocking would also be set up in raspi-config, but I haven't had any need to do this.

All of the following commands require root privilege.  You can either put sudo before each command or enter sudo -i and run a shell as root.

Create a new user for myself, give it sudoer privilege.
adduser ted 
echo "ted ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL" >>/etc/sudoers

Update the package database and upgrade all installed packages.
apt-get update 
apt-get upgrade

Install some new packages.
apt-get install samba screen libmysqlclient-dev libi2c-dev

Configure Samba (Windows file sharing)
vi /etc/samba/smb.conf
uncomment "socket options = TCP_NODELAY"
delete all shares and add:
[opt]
   comment = opt
   writable = yes
   locking = no
   path = /opt
   public = yes

Restart the Samba service
service samba restart  

Edit the SSH server config.  Turning off DNS reverse lookups will speed up the connection process when to log in through SSH.
vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config
add "UseDNS no"

Edit the netwrok configuration and set static IP address and wifi config.  The interface name for the wifi will be used below in the supplicant file.
vi /etc/network/interfaces
iface eth0 inet static
   address 192.168.0.51
   netmask 255.255.255.0
   gateway 192.168.0.1
   
iface home inet static 
   address 192.168.0.53
   netmask 255.255.255.0
   gateway 192.168.0.1

Edit the wifi supplicant file.  The "id_str" setting connects back to the name used above.
vi /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
network={
        id_str="home"
        ssid="NOTMYSSID"
        psk="NotMyPassword"
        proto=WPA
        key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
        pairwise=TKIP
        auth_alg=OPEN
}

Install Gordon's WiringPi library.  I use this extensively in my C programming.
cd ~
git clone git://git.drogon.net/wiringPi
cd wiringPi
git pull origin
./build
gpio -v
gpio readall

Edit the kernel module configuration to enable SPI, I2C, and 1-Wire.
vi /etc/modprobe.d/raspi-blacklist.conf
uncomment SPI and I2C devices

vi /etc/modules
add this
# SPI devices  
spi-dev  
# I2C devices  
i2c-dev  
i2c_bcm2708
# 1-Wire devices  
w1-gpio  
# 1-Wire thermometer devices  
w1-therm  

Finally, reboot the system again.  Then log on as the new user you created and  remove the default user.
userdel pi

If you don't do this last step and your system is accessible from the internet, then it will not be long (sometimes only hours or minutes) before a hacker finds it and does bad things.  My firewall log shows constant attempts to brute force a login via SSH and "pi" is a common user name that is tried.