Raspberry Pi Setup

After loading the Raspberry Pi image, the device boots into the raspi-config tool. But since the Pi is powered off a USB port off my desk (not recommended by the manual, presumably because the USB port may or may not supply enough current), I'd like to do some additional setup to facilitate my development process: 

1. Wifi setup

Wifi setup was fairly straight forward with a compatible Wifi dongle. I bought the Asus N10 from a local retailer and followed the instruction here: http://www.raspberrypi-tutorials.co.uk/set-raspberry-pi-wireless-network/

More specifically, all I had to do was: 

sudo vi /etc/wpa.config

And add: 

network={
ssid="MY_SSID"
proto=RSN
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
pairwise=CCMP TKIP
group=CCMP TKIP
psk="WPA-PASSWORD"
}

Then: 

sudo vi /etc/network/interfaces

And add: 

auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wpa-conf /etc/wpa.config

And restart the network interface: 

sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

Now I can ssh into the Pi using Putty. 

Edit: 
I tried to set this up with using a keyboard connected, the Pi had problem reading the conf file and led to wpa_supplicant failure, even though the dongle was detected correctly (ifconfig shows wlan0). 

I think this is relating to the default keyboard layout of the Pi and the fact I'm using an international keyboard. 

I connect the Pi locally using an ethernet cable, ssh'ed into the Pi and re-wrote the config file and issued ifdown and ifup to wlan0. The interface came up correctly. 

2. Disable overscan 

When my Pi boots up there's a black margin around the console. I'm not sure why this happens, but all I had to do was to disable overscan: 

sudo vi /boot/config.txt

Uncomment the following line: 

disable_overscan=1

Power cycle the Pi. 

3. Extend the partition

By default the image has a partition of < 60M. To extend that: 

sudo raspi-config

And select: 

expand_rootfs

Wait and reboot. Note that the resizing on the next boot will take a bit of time. My 16GB took about 15 minutes or more. 

4. Mount the Windows share drive: http://www.swerdna.net.au/susesambacifs.html

mount -t cifs -o username=guest,password=guest //192.168.1.100/share /mount/share

5. Install pv (file copy with progress indicator): http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/5107/copy-a-file-using-pv-and-watch-its-progress

sudo apt-get install pv
pv source > destination