I reccently bought a Raspberry PI. I am new to ArchLinux so I thought I'd make some notes of the initial setup. This is the hardware used to build the camera:

  • Raspberry Pi Model B 512MB RAM
  • Camera Module for Raspberry Pi
  • WiFi USB Nano
  • OpenBox Sky Case
  • 16GB SD

Partitioning SD card

I added the ArchLinux image to a 16GB card. The images creates a 2GB parition so you need to either extend it before booting or create a new partition after boot. I choose to create a new partition after boot, and use it for /home.

fdisk /dev/disk/by-id/mmc-*
n add partition
w save and exit

Create file system.

mkfs.ext4 /dev/mmcblk0p3

Remove everything in /home. I am assuming you have nothing important here yet.

rm -rf /home/*

Mount the device at boot.

/dev/mmcblk0p3 /home ext4 defaults 0 2

Package manager

I had never heard of Pacman package manager before. But its just as easy. To search for packages do this.

pacman -Ss partOfPackageName

To install a package do this.

pacman -S packageName

Upgrade all packages.

pacman -Syu

Initiallly I had some problems when installing packages. I got this.

"from mirror.archlinuxarm.org : The requested URL returned error: 404 Not Found"

Just perform a full uppgrade and it should be resolved.

Network setup

To list available devices do.

ip link

To get the wireless network running I installed these.

pacman -S wpa_supplicant
pacman -S wpa_actiond
pacman -S ifplugd
pacman -S dhclient
pacman -S openntpd

There is a very nice setup wizard, just do this.

wifi-menu -o

Network configuration exists in profile files. I had some problems with the DHCP client not setting IP:s after network loss. I added DHPClient to the profiles to make it reconnect.

#/etc/netctl/ethernet-dhcp
Description='A basic dhcp ethernet connection'
Interface=eth0
Connection=ethernet
IP=dhcp
DHCPClient='dhclient'
TimeoutDHCP=30
ExecUpPost="ntpd -s &"

#/etc/netctl/wlan0-tallefjantlinksys
Description='Automatically generated profile by wifi-menu'
Interface=wlan0
Connection=wireless
Security=wpa
ESSID=MYNETWORKNAME
IP=dhcp
Key=12312312312313123132
DHCPClient='dhclient'
TimeoutDHCP=30
ExecUpPost="ntpd -s &"

To make WLAN connect when available, and Ethernet connect when plugged, do this.

systemctl enable netctl-auto@wlan0.service
systemctl enable netctl-ifplugd@eth00.service

To make WLAN and Ethernet use DHCP at boot, do this.

systemctl enable dhcpcd@eth0
systemctl enable dhcpcd@wlan0

I noted that the network setup was not working after the first initual upgrade with Pacman. To solve it I just disabled the enabled services and enabled them again.

systemctl status --failed
systemctl disable FAILEDSERVICE

I had problems with DHCP timeouts so I added the TimeoutDHCP parameter and set it to 30. Default is 10 seconds. Also the ExecUpPost will set time from NTP when connected.

Time and date

In my case, Sweden.

rm /etc/timezone
ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Stockholm /etc/timezone

Also, the Raspberry Pi has no battery. The time will be 1970 on every reboot. You can use NTP to set the date from a time server on startup.

pacman -S openntpd

To start ntpd when a network interface is connected, add ExecUpPost to your interface profile. Here is an example of my eth0.

Description='A basic dhcp ethernet connection'
Interface=eth0
Connection=ethernet
IP=dhcp
ExecUpPost="ntpd -s &"
Raspberry Camera

Camera module software in PATH

In ~/.bashrc I added.

export PATH=$PATH:/opt/vc/bin

Tweak camera memory usage

In /boot/config.txt I added.

gpu_mem=128
start_file=start_x.elf
fixup_file=fixup_x.dat

Speed up camera

The camera may seem slow. There is a default delay of 5 seconds before it takes the picture. You can change this with -t 0.
I've noticed the device hangs when storing larger videos. It's a good idea to record video directly to RAM, that works much better for me. By default /tmp is mounted as tmpfs.

/opt/vc/bin/raspistill -t 0 -o /tmp/test.png
/opt/vc/bin/raspivid -o /tmp/out.h264 -t 5000
/opt/vc/bin/raspivid -o /tmp/out.h264 -t 20000
/opt/vc/bin/raspivid -o /tmp/out.h264 -t 60000