I got my new shinny Raspberry PI a few days ago, and got some time to play with it today. I am a windows guy by default and this is my first adventure in to the world of Linux. While getting everything started it up I ran in to these questions.
[Q] I have a 700 mA USB power supply but my Raspberry PI keeps turning off randomly, Why?
[A] 700 mA is the absolute minimum, Once I switched to a 1500 mA power supply I had a lot less problems with random restarts.
[Q] My keyboard is not working when plugged directly in to the main board, Why?
[A] The main board is only capable of producing 100 mA per channel over the USB, my keyboard draws 500 mA (more then I would have expected, cheap Chinese gear). The Raspberry PI disabled that port and the keyboard would not function. I found a self powered USB hub to power the keyboard and mouse off of and that seemed to resolve this problem. R-Pi does not respond to key presses
[Q] Okay, I got my Raspberry PI to boot, What is the default username and password?
[A] The default username and password can be found on the download page for the Raspberry PI OS. Username: pi Password: raspberry
[Q] Now that I am logged in how to I get the desktop to show?
[A] You need to launch a desktop environment, (Debian “squeeze”) comes with X Windows. You can start it by typing “startx” in the command prompt.
[Q] With the default firmware (Debian “squeeze”), The keyboard is set to British formatted keyboard, and I would like it to be set to US formatted key board. How do I do this?
[A] From the terminal window
- Type ‘sudo su’ then press =enter]
- Run ‘dpkg-reconfigure locales’ and changing from en_GB.UTF-8 to en_US.UTF-8 (or whatever country setting you need).
- Run ‘dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration’ and change the keyboard to USA PC104 (again, change as needed).
- Reboot.
No Comments.