Install Raspbian Operating System on SD Card

First, we need to format the SD card using the MS-DOS (FAT) format. Then, we need to install the Raspbian operating system on the SD card:

# create temporary directory
$ sudo mkdir /raspbian/
$ cd /raspbian/

# install 'Raspbian' image (not on SD card)
$ sudo wget -P /raspbian/ http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspbian_latest
$ ls
raspbian_latest
$ sudo unzip raspbian_latest
$ ls
2014-09-09-wheezy-raspbian.img          raspbian_latest

# get partition listing
$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            999.3 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     Apple_partition_scheme                        *27.9 MB    disk1
   1:        Apple_partition_map                         32.3 KB    disk1s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS src/sqlitebrowser       27.8 MB    disk1s2
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *7.8 GB     disk2
   1:                 DOS_FAT_32 SD-RPI                  7.8 GB     disk2s1
/dev/disk4
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *64.0 GB    disk4
   1:                 DOS_FAT_32 USB-RPI-1               32.0 GB    disk4s1
   2:                 DOS_FAT_32 USB-RPI-2               32.0 GB    disk4s2

# copy 'Raspbian' image to SD card
$ sudo diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2
$ sudo dd if=2014-09-09-wheezy-raspbian.img | sudo pv | sudo dd of=/dev/rdisk2 bs=1m
6400000+0 records in1MiB/s] [                                                                        <=>       ]
6400000+0 records out
3276800000 bytes transferred in 646.064640 secs (5071938 bytes/sec)
3.05GiB 0:10:46 [4.84MiB/s] [                                                                          <=>     ]
0+50000 records in
0+50000 records out
3276800000 bytes transferred in 646.141940 secs (5071332 bytes/sec)

Note: the very last command can take up to 20mins. During our execution, pv had a transfer range of roughly 3.9-5.23MiB/s, while the file was being copied, raspbian_latest is 3276800000 bytes.

Note: if we had put bs=1m before the first pipe only, or completely excluded the use of this property, the transfer rate would have varied between 660-740KiB/s.

Note: if we had typed sudo dd of=/dev/disk2, instead of our correctly type sudo dd of=/dev/rdisk2, the speed would have been roughly 1/5, or about 1MiB/s.

jeff1evesque / raspberry-pi

Install Raspbian Operating System on SD Card #19