Raspberry Pi Fresh Install

1. Get the latest image and save it locally. As of this writing it is Bullseye. I chose the 64 bit image for my Raspberry Pi 3B+

https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/operating-systems/

2. Write the downloaded image to an SD card. The simplest way to do this is the Raspberry Pi Imager (found at the link below). It’s a great way to go because if you click on the gear, you can also set the user name and password, enable ssh, and configure WiFi among other things. In the old days you had to create/modify text files on the SD card to do this.

https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/

3. Put the SD card in Raspberry Pi and boot it.

4. Log into the router to determine ip address so I can ssh to it. I prefer to set a static DHCP address in the router for the Raspberry Pi so the IP address is always the same. The added benefit is that I don’t have to configure the Raspberry Pi to have a static IP address or modify its default dhcp network setting.

5. Once the Raspberry Pi is up, login with the credentials set when the image was created. I was surprised how quickly and smoothly this all worked. I’m using an ethernet cable connected to a switch and it worked without configuring anything.

6. Because I like to experiment and get sick of the ssh known_host conflict when I boot from a new or different SD card, I add this line to my local ~/.ssh/config

Host raspberry
    User barry
    HostName 192.168.25.150
    StrictHostKeyChecking no
    UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null

7. (Optional) Disable IPV6–I know it’s the future of the internet, etc. etc. etc. and yet I don’t need it and it just adds more noise to Pi-hole, my router, etc. so I like it off.

Open up /etc/sysctl.conf and add the following lines to the end and then reboot.

net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6 = 1
net.ipv6.conf.default.disable_ipv6 = 1
net.ipv6.conf.lo.disable_ipv6 = 1