Bootable Raspbian "Pisces" Image by Mike Thompson

Please Note: The Raspberry Pi Foundation has produced and released their own recommended image of Raspbian. All users are encouraged to download the Foundation image as it is the best supported image within the Raspberry Pi Forums. This "official" Raspbian image can be downloaded directly from the Raspberry Pi Website Downloads Page.

Mike Thompson has produced a publicly available SD image of Raspbian that is bootable on Raspberry Pi hardware. This is called the "pisces" image as that is what Mike's Raspberry Pi system is named on his LAN.

This image is a little newer and includes a more complete installation of Raspbian and LXDE than the more minimal Hexxeh image. This image was created using the Debian installer so it reflects a minimal Debian installation with the LXDE packages added for a desktop.

Download the R3 Image

The 449 MB R3 image can be downloaded from this link rpi_pisces_r3.zip or torrent.

Once booted, log into one of the two existing accounts:

Image Install

To install the image file, you will need to unzip it and write it to a suitable 4G or larger SD card using the UNIX tool dd. Windows users should use Win32DiskImager. Do not try to drag and drop or otherwise copy over the image without using dd or Win32DiskImager – it won’t work. If you’re still not clear on what to do, the community on the Raspberry Pi Wiki has written a guide for beginners on how to set up your SD card.

Image Notes

• Typical Linux tools and editors are included
• GNU C and C++ compilers included
• SSH server included, launches on boot by default
• Xorg and LXDE included, type "startx" to launch this after logging in
• Hexxeh's rpi-update is included
• Updated to the latest Raspberry Pi firmware and kernel as of July 10th

Some notes concerning this image:

• Remember to reset 'root' and 'raspbian' passwords and OpenSSH server host keys to avoid security issues.

• Configure your timezone:

  • dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

• Configure locale settings:

  • apt-get install locales

    dpkg-reconfigure locales

• Configure keyboard settings:

  • apt-get install keyboard-configuration

    dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration

• Configure Exim

  • dpkg-reconfigure exim4-config

• Install the Midori web browser:

  • apt-get install midori

• Configure /etc/apt/sources.list to pick-up 'contrib' and 'non-free' repositories.

Keeping Up to Date

You can use the standard Debian way to update your installation:

• apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade

To get the newest kernel and firmware, rpi-update is included in this image.

Verify the system time and date are set correctly and then run the following command:

• rpi-update

Older R2 Image

The older 465 MB R2 image can be downloaded from this link rpi_pisces_r2.zip or torrent.

Older R1 Image

The older 466 MB R1 image can be downloaded from this link rpi_pisces_r1.zip or torrent.

Some notes concerning this image:

• DHCP may fail on boot and the Raspberry Pi may not have network connectivity.
  • To fix this, delete all lines in the file '/etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules' and reboot. DHCP should then be functional and your Raspberry Pi should be assigned an IP address from the DHCP server on your local LAN.
  • The problem is that ethernet address of the Raspberry Pi I created the image on differs from the ethernet address on your Raspberry Pi. The OS notices this and assigns the ethernet interface to device 'eth1' rather than 'eth0' which is configured to use DHCP in the '/etc/network/interfaces' file.
  • It has been reported that the fix above doesn't always work. An alternate fix is to

    edit the /etc/network/interfaces file and change eth0 to eth1 and reboot.