Installing Raspberry Pi OS

This guide walks through installing Raspberry Pi OS on an SD card, booting a Raspberry Pi for the first time, and performing some basic configuration.

For the initial installation, we will use the official Raspberry Pi Imager.

Note

You can alternatively directly download OS images from the above link if you wish to install them manually.

What You’ll Need

Before getting started, you will need:

• A Raspberry Pi
• An SD card
• A device (e.g. laptop, desktop, another pi) with:
  • Raspberry Pi Imager installed
  • An SD card slot, adapter, or reader
• A monitor and appropriate display cable
• A keyboard and mouse
• A power cable (or another appropriate power source, such as PoE)
• (If using a wired connection) Ethernet cable

Note

There are other ways to configure a Raspberry Pi, including running it headlessly without a monitor, keyboard, or mouse. If you are configuring a Pi with specific needs in mind, you may need to adjust these instructions to fit your use case.

Install Raspberry Pi OS

Insert the SD card into the computer running Raspberry Pi Imager and open Raspberry Pi Imager.

1. Choose your Raspberry Pi

   Select the model of Raspberry Pi you are installing the operating system on.

   For example: Raspberry Pi 4

   

2. Choose the operating system

   Choose the operating system you want to install on your Raspberry Pi.

   For example: Raspberry Pi OS (64-bit)

   

   Note

   Raspberry Pi OS is a port of Debian. For some software and configuration, you may need to follow instructions written for Debian rather than instructions specifically written for Raspberry Pi OS.

3. Choose your storage

   Select the SD card you inserted.

   

   Check the selected storage device

   Make sure you select the correct SD card. Its existing contents will be erased when Raspberry Pi Imager writes the operating system.

4. Customization: Set Hostname

   Enter the hostname for your Raspberry Pi.

   

5. Customization: Set Localization

   Configure the localization settings for your Raspberry Pi.

   

6. Customization: Set Username & Password

   Enter the username and password for your Raspberry Pi.

   

7. Customization: Wifi, SSH, and Raspberry Pi Connect

   Configure the Wifi, SSH, and Raspberry Pi Connect settings for your Raspberry Pi as needed. For the purposes of this guide, you can leave them at their default settings.

8. Write the operating system to the SD card

   Once you have configured all the necessary settings, click Write to write the operating system to the SD card. Confirm that you want to proceed when prompted. You may also be prompted to input your password. Then, wait for the writing process to complete.

   

9. Write complete!

   Select Finish when the write is complete. You have successfully written the operating system to the SD card. You can now remove the SD card from your computer and insert it into your Raspberry Pi to boot it up.

   

Boot the Raspberry Pi

Once Raspberry Pi Imager has finished:

1. Remove the SD card from your computer.
2. Insert it into the Raspberry Pi.
3. Connect your monitor, keyboard, mouse, network connection, and any other necessary peripherals.
4. Connect power to the Raspberry Pi.

Wait for Raspberry Pi OS to finish booting.

Once it has booted, open the Terminal.

You should see a command prompt similar to:

username@hostname

Update Raspberry Pi OS

After the Raspberry Pi has booted, update its package information and installed packages:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade -y

Tip

You should periodically install updates unless you have configured your Raspberry Pi to handle updates automatically. It is particularly useful to update before making other significant system changes.

Troubleshooting the System Time

If the system time is incorrect or is not synchronizing, you can restart network time synchronization:

sudo timedatectl set-ntp false
timedatectl status

sudo timedatectl set-ntp true
timedatectl status

If the time is still incorrect, temporarily set it manually:

sudo date -s 'YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS'

Then open the Raspberry Pi configuration utility:

sudo raspi-config

Check that the correct time zone is configured.

Once the system time is correct, retry the commands that were previously failing.

Optional: Enable SSH Later

If you did not enable SSH through Raspberry Pi Imager, you can enable it later with:

sudo raspi-config

Navigate to:

Interface Options → SSH → Yes

Press Enter to select each option.

You can also enable SSH through Preferences → Raspberry Pi Configuration in the desktop interface.

Optional: Back Up an SD Card

You can create a compressed image of an existing Raspberry Pi SD card from another Linux system.

First, connect the SD card and determine its device name.

Verify the device name

Be certain that <device> refers to the correct SD card before using dd. Specifying the wrong device can result in data loss.

Create the backup:

sudo dd if=<device> status=progress bs=32M | gzip -c > <path-to-backup>/raspberrypi.img.gz

To restore the backup:

gunzip -c <path-to-backup>/raspberrypi.img.gz | sudo dd of=<device> status=progress bs=32M

The backup is compressed with gzip so that the resulting file does not necessarily occupy the full capacity of the SD card.

Optional: Clone an SD Card

To clone one SD card directly to another, connect both cards to the computer and determine their device names.

Double-check the input and output devices

The input device is the SD card you are copying from.

The output device is the SD card you are copying to. Existing data on the output device will be overwritten.

Make sure both device names are correct before running the command.

Clone the card with:

sudo dd bs=32M if=<input-device> of=<output-device>

Once the command completes, the output SD card will contain a copy of the original card.

Additional Resources

• Raspberry Pi Imager
• Raspberry Pi Documentation
• Getting Started with Raspberry Pi Imager