Setup Raspbian
Once you have your Raspberry Pi setup and plugged in, turn the power switch on via wall socket (there is no on/off switch for the Pi) and look for the boot up screen which resembles a Debian-like boot up process. After the boot up sequence has finished, you should now be looking at the login prompt
Let’s login with the default username pi and password raspberry (use the Enter key after each command):
pi [enter]
raspberry [enter]
Now we need to give the root user a password, enter the following command:
sudo passwd
[enter password]
[confirm password]
…now we need to login as root so enter the following command:
su
[enter password]
…you will now be logged in as root so be careful. Now let’s setup your Pi, enter the following command:
raspi-config
…then change the following settings (or follow the slideshow further below):
- Note* Use the Arrow keys to move up and down, use Enter key to select/confirm, use Tab key to select Cancel or Finish
- Select Change User Password then Enter, type a strong password, then confirm
- Select Hostname, Ok to alert prompt, then type lamp for hostname (or anything you want) then Ok
- Select Interfacing Options, select SSH, then Yes to enable, then Ok
- Select Advanced Options, select Expand Filesystem, then Ok
- On Home Screen, hit Tab key until the <Finish> item is selected, hit Enter to reboot
- You Raspberry Pi is now configured
Scott J says
My bad…. I missed it…. you have a link to FileZilla in the section just above where I jumped to…. thank you!
Scott J says
I think this tutorial is great, and I’m using it this evening to learn about LAMP servers and about my RPi 3. I’m basically new to Linux and while not “new car smell” new, I’m wondering how exactly you envision connecting SFTP? Just since i’m playing around, I figure the SSH-FTP route would be the way to go, but not sure how I’m supposed to use connection data. Are you suggesting using WinSCP or similar which takes the IP address, port, protocol, login, and password? I’m just not clear how that login process is supposed to happen. I’ll dig around on your site some more, but how you’re intending us to apply that information is unclear (I have a guess on some options, but your intention might be easier than what else I might try). Still, I greatly appreciate the post!
Richie says
Hi Scott, thanks for your question and feedback. In this tutorial I give two ways to connect to your RPi; (1) via SSH-FTP (SFTP) which is a bit dangerous as you’ll login as root and have access to entire filesystem or (2) install and setup VSFTPD then login using FTPS which is the better option. The client for both connection types is PuTTY, but any FTP client should do. FTPS is FTP over a secure SSL or TLS encrypted connection, whereas SFTP or SSH-FTP is data transfer over the SSH connection. The reason I recommend FTPS is you can lock-down the folder access to just the
/var/wwwfolder, whereas the SSH-FTP gives access to the entire filesystem, I realize I could have created a separate Linux user, but it’s difficult to lock down to the/var/wwwfolder, and permissions are a nightmare. Cheers! RichieScott J says
Thank you Richie. The precaution of using VSFTPD makes sense both in your reply above, and in the main article for the security reasons you cited. For my purposes, which is just trying it out at home, the SSH-FTP route is just fine, but I understand your point and its validity.
One more point, which I think I have right and I’ll make here for anyone passing this way that momentarily is confused on that last section: Although you’re saying to use root for login after changing the sshd_config file, root is not enabled by default on Debian (which Raspbian is based) distributions. You would need to enable the root account, which is not covered in the procedure above.
Richie says
Hi Scott, yes VSFTPD is the better/safer option. I actually do go through changing the
AllowRootLogin without-passwordtoAllowRootLogin yesunder the “Login to FTP as Root User” section, but you may not have read it as you went down the VSFTPD path š Cheers, Richie