Writing Raspbian OS Image to SD Card on Linux

Posted on by max


This is how to write Raspbian OS image to SD card by using Linux command line. Since the steps below use “dd” command which may cause damage to your system if used wrongly, please be careful about the usage.

 

Contents
– Assumptions
– Steps
1. Download Raspbian OS Image
2. Find device name of SD card on Linux
3. Write Raspbian OS image to SD card
– Reference

 

Assumptions

  • Raspberry Pi board
  • Micro SD card
  • Linux PC
  • Micro SD card adapter

 

Steps
1. Download Raspbian OS Image
1-1. Download Raspbian OS zip archive from the official site to your Linux PC.

 

2. Find device name of SD card on Linux
2-1. Before insert SD card into your PC, check all the mounted devices by typing:

df -h

Output should be like this:

$ df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev            3.9G     0  3.9G   0% /dev
tmpfs           789M  9.5M  780M   2% /run
/dev/sda1       451G   17G  412G   4% /
tmpfs           3.9G   61M  3.8G   2% /dev/shm
tmpfs           5.0M  4.0K  5.0M   1% /run/lock
tmpfs           3.9G     0  3.9G   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs           789M   72K  789M   1% /run/user/1000

2-2. Then, insert the SD card and check it again.

$ df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev            3.9G     0  3.9G   0% /dev
tmpfs           789M  9.5M  779M   2% /run
/dev/sda1       451G   17G  412G   4% /
tmpfs           3.9G   61M  3.8G   2% /dev/shm
tmpfs           5.0M  4.0K  5.0M   1% /run/lock
tmpfs           3.9G     0  3.9G   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs           789M   72K  789M   1% /run/user/1000
/dev/sdb2        30G  8.4G   20G  31% /media/max/037616fd-28fe-4652-8248-2042ea30b929
/dev/sdb1        42M   21M   21M  51% /media/max/boot

2-3. Compare the outputs. Newly added device is for the SD card. Since the last part (“1”) is the partition number, the device name for whole SD card is /dev/sdb. Take a note of the device name.

2-4. Unmount the SD card partition(s). Type below, replacing /dev/sdb1 with your SD card device name.

umount /dev/sdb1

 

3. Write Raspbian OS image to SD card
3-1. Type below to unzip the archive and write it to SD card. Please replace “2017-08-16-raspbian-stretch.zip” with the file name of your OS image archive and “/dev/sdb” with your SD card device (see step 2-3).

unzip -p 2017-08-16-raspbian-stretch.zip | sudo dd of=/dev/sdb bs=4M status=progress conv=fsync

In case you are writing .img file, type below:

sudo dd bs=4M if=2017-08-16-raspbian-stretch.img of=/dev/sdb status=progress conv=fsync

 

Reference
– INSTALLING OPERATING SYSTEM IMAGES ON LINUX
https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/installation/installing-images/linux.md

– RPi Easy SD Card Setup
http://elinux.org/RPi_Easy_SD_Card_Setup