My Raspbian Dotfiles and General Setup

This the general setup I use on my Raspberry Pi B+ running Raspbian. In addition to instructions relating to the installation and use of the dotfiles, I've also added quite a bit of extra info on how I setup a Pi from scratch. Obviously, there are many ways to go about this depending on how you plan to use your Pi, but these are general steps that I use commonly and are mainly included here for my own convenience.

The dotfiles themselves have been adapted from my OS X setup. Comments and suggestions welcome. :)

Setting up the Pi

Flash the SD card with the latest Raspbian image.

Boot the Pi from the new card and run through the initial config.

Connect to the local wifi network either from the command line or via the GUI.

Test your connection.

ping -c 5 8.8.8.8

Update packages.

sudo apt-get -y update && sudo apt-get -y upgrade

Install other packages.

sudo apt-get install -y curl zsh vim tree nmap tmux git figlet fonts-inconsolata

Dotfiles Setup

Verify that zsh is installed.

which zsh
#=> /usr/bin/zsh

Change your shell to zsh.

chsh -s $(which zsh)

Install oh-my-zsh.

curl -L http://install.ohmyz.sh | sh

Close and reopen terminal to complete oh-my-zsh install.

NOTE: The rest of the setup process assumes you are using zsh and not bash.

Clone this repo.

git clone https://github.com/joshukraine/dotfiles-raspbian.git ~/.dotfiles

Symlink the rc files.

ln -nfs ~/.dotfiles/gemrc ~/.gemrc
ln -nfs ~/.dotfiles/gitignore ~/.gitignore_global
ln -nfs ~/.dotfiles/gitconfig ~/.gitconfig
ln -nfs ~/.dotfiles/tmux.conf ~/.tmux.conf
ln -nfs ~/.dotfiles/vim ~/.vim
ln -nfs ~/.dotfiles/vimrc ~/.vimrc
ln -nfs ~/.dotfiles/zshrc ~/.zshrc
source ~/.zshrc

Set up the ~/.vim/bundle directory needed by the Vundle plugin manager.

git clone https://github.com/gmarik/Vundle.vim.git ~/.vim/bundle/Vundle.vim

Set up a ~/.tmp directory (needed by vim)

mkdir ~/.tmp

Install vim plugins with Vundle.

vim +PluginInstall +qall

Rbenv Setup

These are the steps that worked for to get rbenv working on the Pi.

# Clone the needed files.
git clone https://github.com/sstephenson/rbenv.git ~/.rbenv
git clone https://github.com/sstephenson/ruby-build.git ~/.rbenv/plugins/ruby-build
git clone https://github.com/sstephenson/rbenv-gem-rehash.git ~/.rbenv/plugins/rbenv-gem-rehash

# Add ~/.rbenv/bin to your $PATH for access to the rbenv command-line utility.
echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.rbenv/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.zshrc

# Add rbenv init to your shell to enable shims and autocompletion.
echo 'eval "$(rbenv init -)"' >> ~/.zshrc

# Pick up the changes.
source ~/.zshrc

Verify that rbenv is properly installed.

type rbenv
#=> "rbenv is a shell function"

Verify that the install command is available.

rbenv install                                                        
#=> Usage: rbenv install [-f] [-kvp] <version>
    rbenv install [-f] [-kvp] <definition-file>
    rbenv install -l|--list
    [...]

Install ruby.

rbenv install <version number>

Install rails-related packages.

sudo apt-get install -y autoconf automake bison build-essential libreadline6 libreadline6-dev libsqlite3-dev libssl-dev libtool libxml2-dev libxslt-dev libyaml-dev nodejs openssl postgresql sqlite3 zlib1g zlib1g-dev

Install rails. (Avoid using sudo to prevent rails from installing to the system-installed ruby directory.

gem install rails

NOTE: If you've installed the dotfiles, the .gemrc file will prevent any docs from being installed with rails or other gems.

Extras

Remap the caps lock key to ctrl.

# Open the file /etc/default/keyboard
sudo vim /etc/default/keyboard

# Edit the XKBOPTIONS entry
XKBOPTIONS="terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp,ctrl:nocaps"

# After saving and closing the file, run:
sudo dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration

# Restart the Pi

I use tmuxinator for quickly setting up tmux environments.

gem install tmuxinator

Change the default console font.

# Launch the package configuration utility.
sudo dpkg-reconfigure console-setup

# Select the desired font (I use Terminus) and size (I like 12x24).

I recently got a new keyboard/mouse combo. When I first connected them, the mouse was super slow and laggy. After a bit of googling, I fixed it using the following steps based on this GitHub issue.

# 1. Edit the file cmdline.txt
sudo nano /boot/cmdline.txt

# 2. Add the following in-line to whatever is already in the file.
usbhid.mousepoll=0

# 3. Save and close the file and reboot. Problem solved.

Notes

In case you're not me, you'll want to add your own name and email to ~/.dotfiles/gitconfig.