Setting up Raspberry PI to run LinBPQ

Introduction

These are the instructions for starting from scratch, on a Windows PC (which must have a SDHC card reader - either built in or USB)

Installing Linux OS

Acquire a flash card - preferably Class 10, but I've used Class 6. The Lite (non-GUI) version will fit on a 2GB card but the the GUI version needs at least 8 GB. In some ways larger chars are better, and may improve the life of the card, but it will take a long time to back up or create copies.

Download Win32DiskImager . Unzip to a suitable folder

Download the latest Raspbian image from here. If you only want to use the Linux command line interface you can use the Lite version. If you want to use the GUI Desktop you'll need the full version. . Unzip.

Insert SD card into PC card reader. Check (very carefully!) what drive letter it appears as in "My Computer".

Run Win32DiskImager. Select Image file and SD Device . (check device letter again)

Click "Write"

It will take a few minutes to write the image to the card. Once it has finshed check card in "My Computer" - it should appear to be about 55 Mb. The rest of the space is a Linux partition that Window can't see.

If you don't have a screen and keyboard attached to the Pi you can access it using ssh. ssh access is disabled by defaut for security reasons, so to use it you have to enable it. This is done be creating a file called "ssh" on the SD card (it can be empty).

Unmount and remove card. Place in PI, connect Ethernet, and  keyboard and monitor (if you have them).

Power up.

If you have a monitor attached, you should see the Linux Kernel boot sequence and the file system will be resized to fill the SD card.

If you don't have a monitor and keyboard, you can set up the PI using ssh. You will have to get the IP address of the PI from your router's DCHP table.(or use a network scanning tool to find it).

You can use any ssh client. I used to use putty, which is effective and smple, but have switched to Mobaxterm , which incudes a clone of the putty ssh client, but a load of other nice stuff as well, including ax X server and Remote Desktop client.

Using either the console or ssh, conect to the pi, and log in - user pi, password raspberry.

Installing LinBPQ

Create a directory for linbpq - I suggest linbpq!

mkdir linbpq

go to it

cd linbpq

download latest linbpq amd make executable

wget http://www.cantab.net/users/john.wiseman/Downloads/Beta/pilinbpq
mv pilinbpq linbpq
chmod +x linbpq

Create a directory for the files need for  Web Mangagement,  and download the necessary files

mkdir HTML
cd HTML
wget http://www.cantab.net/users/john.wiseman/Downloads/Beta/HTMLPages.zip
unzip HTMLPages.zip
rm HTMLPages.zip
cd ..

Copy a suitable bpq32.cfg file to the linbpq folder (if you are running MobaXterm, you can drag files to the PI). The format is the same as for Windows BPQ32, but the name must be in lower case.

run linbpq -

./linbpq

To exit, type ctrl/c

For more info on setting up linbpq, including the Mail and Chat features see here

John Wiseman G8BPQ
Updated October 2018