First Boot

The time has come to boot up the Raspberry Pi for the first time...

Connect your USB keyboard and mouse to the two USB ports on the Raspberry Pi. Connect the Raspberry Pi to a suitable display (TV or computer monitor) using an HDMI (or HDMI to DVI) cable. Insert the prepared SD(HC) memory card into the card slot on the underside of the Raspberry Pi. Finally insert the micro USB power connector (making sure that the power adapter is switched on at the mains outlet).

If all goes well the red PWR (Power) LED on the Raspberry Pi board should light up and the ACT (Card Activity) LED should flash green. You will see many lines of text scrolling up on your display - this is normal. After a short time you will be presented with the Raspi-config screen:

Use the arrow keys to move down to the "expand_rootfs" command and press Enter. This will expand the root partition on the SD(HC) card to use all the available space - if you don't execute this command the root partition will only be 2 GB in size regardless of how much space is available on the SD(HC) card. When you execute the "expand_rootfs" command you will see some text scroll up your display and then you should see a dialogue confirming that the root partition has been resized:

Press Enter to close this dialogue and return to the Raspi-config "home" screen. I would recommend that you don't select any of the other commands at this time - although the Raspi-config screen only appears the first time the Raspberry Pi is booted, it can be run again at any time from the command line (you'll see how to do this shortly).

Use the right arrow key to move the cursor down until "Finish" is highlighted in red and then press Enter. You will see a dialogue asking you if you want to reboot now. Press Enter again to reboot the Raspberry Pi. Again you will see a lot of lines of text scroll up your display but eventually after the Raspberry Pi has rebooted you will see the following:

raspberrypi login: _

Type "pi" and press Enter. Now you will see the following:

Password: _

Type "raspberry" and press Enter (note that this time as you type the letters will not appear on the screen - this is to protect the security of your password). You should see some text scroll up your display and then you should see the following prompt:

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ _

This is the Linux command line prompt and it is something that you will become very familiar with. From here you can enter commands directly - for example you can run the Raspi-config application simply by typing "sudo raspi-config" as follows and pressing Enter:

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo raspi-config_

Finally, you need to know how to shut your Raspberry Pi down safely. Type "sudo halt" at the command line prompt as follows, and press Enter

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo halt_

You should see some text scroll up your display and then your display may go completely blank. The PWR LED on the Raspberry Pi should be the only one illuminated. It is now safe to turn your Raspberry off by removing the micro USB power connector.