How to install DietPi¶

Introduction¶

Single board computers (SBCs) based on the well known Raspberry PI ARM based architecture gained more and more friends in the last years. The low cost in combination with the power and hardware flexibility makes these SBCs optimal for embedded systems, like e.g. home automation or cloud applications.

Prerequisites¶

To follow this tutorial, you will need the next hardware list:

• A Raspberry Pi, Odroid or other SBC - open the list of all supported SBC
• An SD card of at least 4 GiB, and a way to write it on your computer (integrated slot or external SD card reader)
• Optional: Ethernet (network) cable

Note: Following this guide you could run the installation directly (from a console) or via network. If you choose an installation via network you will not need a monitor or keyboard connected to your SBC or virtualised environment.

1. Download and extract the DietPi disk image¶

Open dietpi.com and select “Download”. Various supported devices will be displayed. Choose the preferred SBC and click on the Download. The disk image will be downloaded locally.

Example:

Unzip the downloaded file to a local folder.

It is a 7z archive format so you will need to install either 7zip for Windows or The Unarchiver (Macintosh). Both are free of charge and have been tested to unzip the image correctly.

Linux users will need to download and install p7zip (the terminal version of 7zip).

sudo apt install p7zip

7zr e DietPi-Image.7z

2. Flash the DietPi image¶

At first, download and install balenaEtcher. This application flashes OS images to SD cards & USB drives, safely and easily on Windows, macOS, Linux.

Start balenaEtcher and make sure you have your SD card inserted into your computer. Locate and select the DietPi image.

Next, ensure that the SD card selected is the correct one.

Once you have confirmed all the details are correct, proceed to flash the SD card. This process may take a while.

3. Prepare the first boot¶

Remove the SD card from the PC and insert it into your SBC device, preparing to boot for the first time.
Power on the SBC to login and execute the first boot procedure.

Introduction

Virtual machine images are great for those occasions where you want to set up a DietPi system very quickly and test things. Also it may be used as a Debian based Linux system with a small footprint for development purposes, e.g. with the X11 window system. The small footprint makes it optimally usable on PCs without a huge built in RAM. Also several VMs may be run for different applications.

One big advantage of such a VM is that it needs only a couple of minutes coming to a running DietPi system.

One of the options of a virtual machine is Oracle VirtualBox.

Prerequisites

As a starting point you need a PC with a running VirtualBox software on which the DietPi system will run.
On this PC a free harddisk space of about

• 1.2 GiB for a minimal running system
• 5 - 10 GiB for a typical running system with X11

is needed. A recommended size is at least a free space of 10 GiB.

1. Download and extract the DietPi disk image

Download the DietPi VirtualBox file “DietPi_VirtualBox-x86_64-Buster.7z” from dietpi.com and
unzip the downloaded file to a local folder. It is a 7z archive format so you will need to install either 7zip for Windows or other alternative tools.

The zip file contains a couple of files, the important one is the .ova file which has to be imported into VirtualBox.

2. Import of the .ova file in VirtualBox

As next, the VirtualBox virtual machine has to be setup by importing the .ova file (via \File\Import Appliance):

In the following dialog the user has to choose DietPi_VirtualBox-x86_64-Buster.ova as the file which shall be imported.

Keep the settings in the next dialog and klick “Import”.

After the importing has finished the DietPi VirtualBox virtual machine is present:

3. First boot of the new VirtualBox image

Press the start button (green arrow) to ‘boot up’ your system based on the DietPi image. If you do not have a wired LAN connection you have to change the network settings matching to your environment (files \boot\dietpi.txt and \boot\dietpi-wifi.txt).

Introduction

Virtual machine images are great for those occasions where you want to set up a DietPi system very quickly and test things. Also it may be used as a Debian based Linux system with a small footprint for development purposes, e.g. with the X11 window system. The small footprint makes it optimally usable on PCs without a huge built in RAM. Also several VMs may be run for different applications.

One big advantage of such a VM is that it needs only a couple of minutes coming to a running DietPi system.

One of the options of a virtual machine is VMware Workstation Player.

Prerequisites

As a starting point you need a PC with a running VMware Workstation Player software on which the DietPi system will run.

On this PC a free harddisk space of about

• 3 GiB for a minimal running system (1.5 GiB in switched off state)
• 5 - 10 GiB for a typical running system with X11

is needed. A recommended size is at least a free space of 10 GiB.

1. Download and extract the DietPi disk image

Download the DietPi VMware file “DietPi_VMware-x86_64-Buster.7z” from dietpi.com and
unzip the downloaded file to a local folder. It is a 7z archive format so you will need to install either 7zip for Windows or other alternative tools.

The zip file contains a couple of files, the important two are the .vmx and .vmdk file which have to be copied to a VMware machine folder (The folder can be located anywhere on the PCs harddisk).

2. Add the files in VMware

As next, the VMware virtual machine is setup by just opening the .vmx file (via Open a Virtual Machine):

In the following dialog the user has to navigate to the directory where the .vmx and .vmdk file were stored. Then choose DietPi_VMware-x86_64-Buster(.vmx) as the file which shall be opened.
After this the DietPi VMware virtual machine is present and can be started:

3. First boot of the new VMware image

Press the Play virtual machine (green arrow) to ‘boot up’ your system based on the DietPi image. Possibly you have to acknowledge in an appearing dialog “I Copied it” and go on. If you do not have a wired LAN connection you have to change the network settings matching to your environment (files \boot\dietpi.txt and \boot\dietpi-wifi.txt).

Additional information

For information about running DietPi in an VMware ESXi environment, you can read this article: Running the DietPi VMware image on ESXi 6.7.

Introduction

Virtual machine images are great for those occasions where you want to set up a DietPi system very quickly and test things. Also it may be used as a Debian based Linux system with a small footprint for development purposes, e.g. with the X11 window system. The small footprint makes it optimally usable on PCs without a huge built in RAM. Also several VMs may be run for different applications.

One big advantage of such a VM is that it needs only a couple of minutes coming to a running DietPi system.

One of the options of a virtual machine is Microsoft Hyper-V.

Prerequisites

As a starting point you need a PC with a activated Hyper-V on which the DietPi system will run.

On this PC a free harddisk space of about

• 3 GiB for a minimal running system (1.5 GiB in switched off state)
• 8 - 10 GiB for a typical running system with X11

is needed. A recommended size is at least a free space of 10 GiB.

1. Download and extract the DietPi disk image

Download the DietPi Hyper-V file from dietpi.com (will be redirected to GitHub/yumiris) and
unzip the downloaded file to a local folder. It is a 7z archive format so you will need to install either 7zip for Windows or other alternative tools.

The zip file contains a couple of files, the important is the .vhdx file which have to be copied to a Hyper-V machine folder (The folder can be located anywhere on the PCs harddisk).

2. Add a Hyper-V virtual machine

As next, a Hyper-V machine is generated. Right click on your PCs node in the left tree and open the dialog wizard for the machine generation (“New” -> “Virtual Machine”):

In the following wizard you have to set the following:

1. Give your machine a name (“Specify Name and Location”)
2. Select the Hyper-V Generation: Select Generation 1 (“Specify Generation”)
3. Choose your RAM size (e.g. 2048 MB)
4. If you have already configured a network, select your network. Otherwise let it “Not connected” and change it afterwards
5. Choose to use extracted .vhdx Hyper-V disc file (see above)

If you have not set up any network connection, go on with the Virtual Switch Manager and add a network. Select that network in your virtual machine settings afterwards.

3. First boot of the new Hyper-V machine

First, click on Connect to open a window of the virtual machine:

Then press Start to boot up the machine:

After this, your machine should boot up.

Additional information / troubleshooting

Network connection not found
In the case that you did not setup your network configuration properly, the booting procedure will not find a network connection and may respond with this boot console output:

Then you have to check and repair your network configuration within the Virtual Switch Manager.

Enable Secure Boot option (machines of generation 2)
It may also be necessary to deselect the “Enable Secure Boot” option in your virtual machine settings (at least select “Microsoft UEFI Certificate Authority”):

Generate a Hyper-V virtual machine of generation 2
An option to get a Hyper-V generation 2 machine is to generate your own Hyper-V virtual machine via a Debian network installation (booting the Hyper-V machine from a Debian netinst.iso like you would do it on a PC). Install a minimal Debian machine (i.e. no X11 desktops, etc.). Afterwards run the procedure described in section “Make your own distribution”.

Introduction

The Native PC images are great for those occasions where SBC performance is just not enough. One example could be Intel NUC Kit. It is a small, versatile, upgradable, and affordable desktop PC with the same basic feature set as that of a much larger machine.

It could be also a great way to make use of an old computer that’s not capable of running the latest version of Windows or macOS.