Raspbian Wheezy armhf Raspberry Pi minimal image

After the Debian Wheezy armel image I made a new one based on Raspbian armhf. This one is compiled with hard float support, so basically floating point operations are MUCH faster because they are done in hardware instead of software emulation :)

Features include:

  • A minimal Raspbian Wheezy installation (similar to a netinstall)
  • Hard Float binaries: floating point operations are done in hardware instead of software emulation, that means higher performances
  • Disabled incremental updates, means apt-get update is much faster
  • Workaround for a kernel bug which hangs the Raspberry Pi under heavy network/disk loads
  • 3.6.11+ hardfp kernel with latest raspberry pi patches
  • Latest version of the firmwares
  • Fits 1GB SD cards
  • A very tiny 118MB image: even with a 2GB SD there is a lot of free space
  • ssh starts by default
  • The clock is automatically updated using ntp
  • IPv6 support
  • Just 14MB of ram usage after the boot

Here is the link to download my custom image:

http://files2.linuxsystems.it/raspbian_wheezy_20140726.img.7z – London, UK
Checksum MD5: 1be9af7fcec38c7238229edf1c5cdb3c

Mirrors:
7zip: md5sum(1be9af7fcec38c7238229edf1c5cdb3c) – File size: 144MB
http://mirrors.node1.hadrill.org.uk/darkbasic/raspbian_wheezy_20140726.img.7z – Amsterdam, Netherlands (1)
https://debianer.puppis.uberspace.de/files/RaspberryPi/raspbian_wheezy_hardfp_20140726.img.7z – Frankfurt, Germany

You will have to extract the image with p7zip:

7za x raspbian_wheezy_20130923.img.7z

Then flash it to your SD with dd:

dd bs=1M if=raspbian_wheezy_20130923.img of=/dev/sdX

Finally, if you have an sd larger than 1GB, grow the partition with gparted (first move the swap partition at the end).

The root password is raspberry.

 

You will have to reconfigure your timezone after the first boot:

dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

The keyboard layout:

dpkg-reconfigure console-data

And the localization:

dpkg-reconfigure locales

 

It’s done, I hope you will enjoy it.

733 comments to Raspbian Wheezy armhf Raspberry Pi minimal image

  • Jonluk

    To resize:
    swapoff
    fdisk /dev/mmcblk0
    delete partition 3
    delete partition 2
    create new partition 2 at the size you want
    save changes
    resize2fs /dev/mmcblk0p2
    nano /etc/fstab
    comment out the swap partition line
    save fstab
    reboot

    the / partition should now be the size you want/need it to be.

  • chris

    tried the resize as above fails. fdisk swapoff failed no such file or directory
    fdisk

  • Trip

    I’ve been using this image for over a year now and have had absolutely no problems with it.
    Will it be updated to work on the PI2 or should I start hunting about for another image to use?
    Thanks for all your hard work with this :)

  • ToS

    The Image doesn’t work with the my raspberry pi 2. Only red LED is on, the green LED is off. No network connecting/traffic, no boot up – can anybody help?

  • goutbulgare

    Waiting for my PI2, I’m also waiting hardly for your update.
    excellent job, please keep going on!

  • Hi,

    some suggestion to improve your distro:

    – replace ssh server with dropbear is less memory eater
    – delete swap and use dphys-swapfile to create a swapfile that can be resized dynamically

    Regards

    Franco

  • jimbo

    Have been using your image on my pi for ages and it’s awesome. Never had a problem. Just took delivery of my shiny new pi 2 and am actually going to hold off playing with it until you publish a new image because I loved your last one so much :-)

    Hats off!

  • Jeffez

    Hi, i have spent many hours with this image but i cant get usb wifi working. Im using the correct RTL8188CUS based adapter and have been trying to install the 8192cu.ko driver. I have done everything correctly but the kernal just hates my 8192.ko file.

    Is there a 8192cu.ko out there for this images kernal version (3.6.11+)? I upgraded my kernal to 3.12…. and its as if there is NO driver out there that will work with this kernal!

  • We are waiting “RaspPi-2″ new minimal image …

    Jessie or Whezzy…

    :)

  • Jeremy Foran

    http://elinux.org/RPi_Resize_Flash_Partitions#Manually_resizing_the_SD_card_on_Raspberry_Pi

    Start fdisk:

    sudo fdisk /dev/mmcblk0
    Then delete partitions with d and create a new with n. You can view the existing table with p.

    p to see the current start of the main partition
    d, 3 to delete the swap partition
    d, 2 to delete the main partition
    n p 2 to create a new primary partition, next you need to enter the start of the old main partition and then the size (enter for complete SD card). The main partition on the Debian image from 2012-04-19 starts at 157696, but the start of your partition might be different. Check the p output!
    w write the new partition table
    Now you need to reboot:

    sudo shutdown -r now
    After the reboot you need to resize the filesystem on the partition. The resize2fs command will resize your filesystem to the new size from the changed partition table.

    sudo resize2fs /dev/mmcblk0p2
    This will take a few minutes, depending on the size and speed of your SD card.

    When it is done, you can check the new size with:

  • Andreas otten

    I see some people with RPI 2 i am running this image on a pi 2 but well i changed a lot so it in the last year so it isn’t really this image anymore, but you can install rpi-update and do a dist-upgrade then it is some les minimal but it will work with the new kernel 😉
    Maybe it is helpful until the next minimal image is released :)

    • Trip

      Can anyone confirm that this will work? I know it works on the official version of Raspian but I wasn’t too sure about this slimmed down version.

      I guess I could install it on the new SD card in the old Pi, update it, and then swap the card into the new Pi2.
      I’ve got nothing on tomorrow anyway so it will give me something to do if nothing else :)

      Cheers for the heads up Andreas.

    • Chris W

      Just download the image, update on a RPI1, run rpi-update to snag the latest kernel (which is the important part. You need kernel7.img on the boot partition). Once all that is done, jam the card in a RPI2 and enjoy.

      chris.

      • Trip

        This works now but it didn’t the other day. I must have been a bit too eager.
        The network adaptor doesn’t work though.
        Ifconfig only shows the loopback interface but ifconfig -a shows both.
        Anybody know why the network port isn’t being started on boot?

        • Trip

          It seems that for some reason the Pi2 has the network adaptor set as eth1 instead of eth0.
          Got it working but I’m not too sure why it does this. maybe it’s because I set up the static ip on the Pi1 first?

    • Coitadinha!Nem costumo passar pela praça, mas realmente parece impossível tanta gente a passar por lá e ninguém ajuda-la.Vou tentar doar algum dinheiro para a Associação, a ver se ajudo esta e ouros animais, mas a coisa está apertada … ainda assim vou ver o que posso fazer, e já divulguei várias vezes a vossa associação, só não sei se tem surtido resultados, mas vou continuar a fazê-lo.As melhoras para a Christmas.

  • jeff

    Has anyone got the camera working with this?

  • jimbo

    Info for Trip and commenters:

    The network eth0/eth1 problem is caused by a feature of Debian. When you first start it up it saves the MAC address of the network card in /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules and assigns that MAC address to eth0 forever more. When you transfer the card to the new pi, the network interface has a different MAC address so it gets assigned to eth1 as eth0 is already used by the old MAC address (and the new one is appended to the file).

    To prevent this from happening and have eth0 be the network interface when you transfer to the new pi, simply delete /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules and reboot. The network connection with now be assigned to eth0 and all is peachy :-)

    • Trip

      Thanks for that Jimbo.
      It also managed to remove the auto start part at the top of the file too. I’m not too sure why it did this but as long as people know to look out for it, it shouldn’t be too much trouble :)

  • Patrick

    So I’ve got my RPi up and running and working great.
    Thanks Jimbo for that tip about the eth0.

    Now I’d like to place this as a server, but needed to add a few accounts.
    I added a new user, but am unable to get that account as a sudoer or added to the wheel group.
    I’ve attempted to use usermod, without any luck.

    Any ideas?

    • Trip

      Set up a new user on the system: adduser user_name.
      Add the new user to the sudo permission file: adduser user_name sudo.
      Add user to group: adduser user_name group_name.
      Don’t forget to change ownership of any files or folders if needed: chown -R owner_name:group_name /var/www/fileorfoldername.
      Hope that helps :)

      • Patrick

        I don’t know why adduser didn’t work for me last night (maybe a spelling mistake.)
        I was able to add user_name and added them to sudo, but when I try to run a sudo command (ie: apt-get update) I get: -bash: sudo: command not found

        Figured out that sudo wasn’t installed, so as root: apt-get install sudo
        Again: not sure why that didn’t work last night… but it was late.

        • Trip

          That’s strange..
          With the clean install that I just did, I tried to install Sudo and was told that it was already installed??
          Never mind. At least you got it working :)

  • Hi,

    I really like your work. This is a nice small install and a good start point to build a project on raspberry pi.

  • Chris

    I would be interested to know where your figures for RAM (14MB) and image size (118MB) come from. I am working on a robotics project. I started from the (deprecated) raspbian netinst installer (+ hours of minimising it myself), then the raspbian-ua-netinst and have now tried your image, as well as Arch Linux. I created shell scripts (and a C program to use Monte-Carlo estimation of Pi) to compare usage/performance data and am still looking at the results, but I get nothing close to the figures you state.

    • darkbasic

      From the very first version of the image, where everything was super-minimal and made from scratch. Then peoples started asking for features and I switched to the raspbian kernel and added some more things.

  • goutbulgare

    Hi darkbasic. Thank you for your great work. I’ll receive my pi2 this week, any news about the next version? May I help you?

  • Hi,

    Have you had a chance to start working on the Pi 2 version?

    Thanks!

  • Jeremy Foran

    can the community help with the version 2 effort? i believe there is a lot of interest from the community

  • David

    Thank you very much for uploading the image! Works like a charm for me :)

    – David

  • Carl

    Hi,

    How can I add a user to the sudoers?
    Looks like the file /etc/sudoers doesn´t exists….

    Thank you!

  • Pav

    Quick question, will it work on Raspberry Pi II? I read that you have to update kernel on the first one before it will work on Pi II, but I don’t have first Pi.
    Please help.
    Thanks!

    • Patrick

      Pav and Alex (below),
      I have been trying to create an image that has been updated with the newest kernel and using the same footprint as image above.
      However, I can only create the image the size of my SD card (smallest SD card I have is 16 GB.)

      On another note, I haven’t found a great online, public accessible storage location that doesn’t have a lot of ads, spam or potential for malware to infect anybody’s computer.

      If anybody has any tips to easily create an image and point me to a repository that can host this, it would be greatly appreciated.

      • Jack Hadrill

        Hello,

        I provide a mirror for this image currently and will happily host another image for you provided you manage to get it in at under 1GB!!

        Email me if you’re interested – my address is jack [at] hadrill.org.uk

        • Will

          Hello Jack, Patrick,

          Are you willing to share the link for downloading the Raspberry Pi 2 B image?
          I recently got the new model. :)

          Greetz!

          • darkbasic

            There is still no image for the PI2, but I will need to update it for work so I will probably publish it in a few weeks.

  • stim

    Since I got my Pi2, I was looking for something to install on my Pi1. This is it! Works very nicely.
    Many thanks for the re-size walkthroughs above.

    Cheers!

  • Dan

    Minimal Raspbian image. DietPi.

    Minimal Raspbian image with optional installer for popular programs (Kodi/LXDE/Retropie etc). All of which are optimized for your Pi model and “ready to run”.
    http://fuzon.co.uk/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=6

  • Alex

    I tried to set it on Raspberry Pi 2, but it didn’t work.
    I tried to write using dd to sd card on linux and resize the main partition using gparted, but the boot failed stopping at the rainbow screen. Partitions were written properly, I could see inside them.
    I repeated the operation without growing partition but it also failed.

    Were I doing something wrong? Do I need to wait a recompiled version?
    I’d really enjoy to try it, since I need an minimal Raspbian without extra software and with control over partition sizes.

    • Patrick

      Alex,
      I posted a comment to Pav’s request, as it seems similar to yours.

      The rainbow screen is in fact the issue with the kernel version. I ran into the same case when I first tried this image and forgot to update the firmware.
      But once the firmware is updated, the instructions to resize in this thread works great!

  • Octopus

    I am very glad you’ve done this. Thanks so much, but why 7 zip? Can you provide a better alternative? zip or tar?

  • Nice is.

    However the ram usage is a lot higher than the stated 15mb; with the current ram usage after a fresh install uses 38mb

  • Nice os.

    However the ram usage is a lot higher than the stated 15mb; with the current ram usage after a fresh install uses 38mb

  • Chris Bacon

    Hi.

    I upgraded your minimal image that I have been running for some time, to Debian Jessie. The upgrade went fine all except when I rebooted it still has the original kernel running. Is there any way for me to switch to the latest kernel that I installed via the linux-image-rpi metapackage?

    BTW thanks for a great minimal image!

    Regards

    Chris

  • octopus

    apt-get ––purge remove <package>

  • […] Ihr findet das Image und seine Installation hier. […]

  • […] Image Raspbian Wheezy, saya lebih menyarankan yang tanpa GUI karena cukup ringan. Untuk download image Raspbian Wheezy minimal image bisa disini […]

  • Bill

    Any ETA on the RPi2 version? looking forward :)

  • Jim

    I downloaded from your site yesterday the checksum and file size did not match. http://files2.linuxsystems.it/raspbian_wheezy_20140726.img.7z
    File size after decompress: 996.1 MB (996,147,200 bytes)
    md5sum= 04ebad4696034f400cc32e70674b9325

  • Jim

    My bad the checksum matches on the uncompressed file.
    Not sure why I have to different file sizes though.
    One download on windows 950M after decompress another on Jessie 996.1 MB

  • rouge75

    Hey ! :) looking forward for the Pi 2 image !

  • Works perfectly well (after configuring wlan0) on Compute Module. Thanks very much, great work!

  • jerome

    Is there any hope for a distribution around jessie; wheezy is old now; and some applications require newer versions of glibc.

  • Fernando

    Hello,

    thanks a lot for this minimal image! Very useful.

    Is it possible to have the .config for the included kernel?

  • alster

    If bandwith is an issue, why don’t you just use torrent?

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