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Frequently Asked Questions

Mike Chelen edited this page Aug 11, 2014 · 8 revisions

Here are some frequently asked questions about

ByzPi - Byzantium Linux for the RaspberryPi:

Q) What is Byzantium

http://project-byzantium.org/

Byzantium is a live Linux distribution that delivers easy-to-use, secure, and robust mesh networking capabilities.

Q) What is a Raspberry Pi

http://www.raspberrypi.org/faqs

The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard. It’s a capable little PC which can be used for many of the things that your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays high-definition video. We want to see it being used by kids all over the world to learn programming.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi

The Raspberry Pi has a Broadcom BCM2835 system on a chip (SoC), which includes an ARM1176JZF-S 700 MHz processor (The firmware includes a number of "Turbo" modes so that the user can attempt overclocking, up to 1 GHz, without affecting the warranty), and a VideoCore IV GPU. The ARM11 introduced the ARMv6 architectural additions. It does not include a built-in hard disk or solid-state drive, but uses an SD card for booting and long-term storage.

Q) What is Raspbian

http://www.raspbian.org/

Raspbian is a free operating system based on Debian optimized for the Raspberry Pi hardware. An operating system is the set of basic programs and utilities that make your Raspberry Pi run. Raspbian comes with over 35,000 packages, pre-compiled and optimized for best performance on the Raspberry Pi.

Q) What is Byzantium: Raspberry Pi edition?

ByzPi is a one-click mesh network for the Raspberry Pi.

Q) How is the Raspberry Pi edition different from Project Byzantium?

Project Byzantium is built on the Porteus and the Slackware x86 platform. The Raspberry Pi version will run Raspbian and Debian .deb ARM packages.

Q) Why are we building ByzPi?

http://project-byzantium.org/project-byzantium-is-an-isc-grant-recipient/

Project Byzantium was awarded a US$10,000 grant by the Information Security Coalition for the purposes of supporting and advancing development of the project. The first milestone involves porting the latest build of Byzantium Linux to the RaspberryPi. Incidentally, this is a request we receive often so we decided to tackle it as soon as we could.

Q) Where can I find the Raspberry Pi official Raspbian version?

Official Raspberry Pi Raspbian download - http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads

Raspbian “wheezy” (Special raspberry pi version built 2013-02-09, based on Debian 7.0 "Wheezy") is the image we recommend you use. It’s a reference root filesystem from Alex and Dom, based on the Raspbian optimised version of Debian, specifically tuned for optimal performance on the Raspberry Pi ARM11, and containing LXDE, Midori, development tools and example source code for multimedia functions.

Q) Where can I find the Raspbian development site?

Raspbian -- http://www.raspbian.org/RaspbianImages

Q) What websites can I look at for more information on Raspian?

Raspbian on Embedded Linux Wiki -- http://elinux.org/Raspbian

Raspbian on Wikipedia -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspbian

Arstechnica interview with Raspbian founders (Recommended) -- http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/03/how-two-volunteers-built-the-raspberry-pis-operating-system/

Q) How do I emulate the Raspberry Pi platform in a VM for development and testing?

http://xecdesign.com/qemu-emulating-raspberry-pi-the-easy-way/ This page shows how to emulate an ARM1176JZF-S system.

Linux users will find the necessary steps to run 2013-02-09-wheezy-raspbian.img here http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=37386

We have a shell script which automates much of this process in our Git repository: https://github.com/Byzantium/ByzPi/blob/master/raspbian_in_qemu.sh

Q) What are ByzPi specific websites:

Github -- https://github.com/Byzantium/ByzPi

Development Schedule -- https://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=4m2g8bhhqobusl4cfrbhb8aro8%40group.calendar.google.com