So, let’s continue configuring that Raspberry Pi, right? First, I would like to observe some weird behaviour. Please note I have attached a monitor, keyboard and screen to the Raspberry Pi, so I am not using a serial console, as I did when I configured my BeagleBoard.

The Raspberry Pi supports my monitors resolution 1280×1024, while the BeagleBoard does not (at a refresh rate high enough to be accepted by the monitor…. details) Another difference is that it works “out-of-the-box” on the Raspberry Pi. Just plug the monitor in and power it on. It will find out what resolution to use by itself, while the BeagleBoard required it as a kernel parameter.

The BeagleBoard is advertised as a developer board, while the Raspberry Pi aims at being a teaching tool. Another difference between those boards is that the BeagleBoard has a mounted RS-232 connector, while the Raspberry Pi only has the UART to pins on the expansion header, which is 3.3 Volt level. Therefore some level converters are required to be able to use this thing. I have ordererd this one on DX.com. The name says TTL, but in the specs it says “VCC: 3V / 5V”, therefore I think this one will do the trick. But I guess I will have to verify the voltage, as the Raspberry is *not* 5V tolerant.

DX.com, the chinese webshop, selling all kinds of stuff. I have ordered stuff there before. Free shipping, it may take a while to get it, but it’s for free. Not all my orders there have been without problems, but their customer services are good. If there are any problems, they offer replacement of refund. No difficult questions asked.

Anyways, why did I even start talking about the monitor being connected stuff, well, it’s because I am unable to log in (as root, I haven’t created users yet) on tty2, tty5 and tty6. But it works on tty1, tty3 and tty4. Looking at /var/log/auth.log

Nov 17 10:15:54 rpi-server login: pam_unix(login:session): session opened for user root by LOGIN(uid=0)
Nov 17 10:15:54 rpi-server systemd-logind[98]: New session c1 of user root.
Nov 17 10:15:54 rpi-server login: ROOT LOGIN ON tty1
Nov 17 10:16:04 rpi-server login: pam_securetty(login:auth): access denied: tty ‘tty2’ is not secure !
Nov 17 10:16:12 rpi-server login: FAILED LOGIN 1 FROM tty2 FOR root, Authentication failure

So, we see a successful login and an unsuccessful one. They’re similar for the other tty’s mentioned. Asking this question go Google gives me securetty. /etc/securetty is a text file which lists the tty’s where root is allowed to login. The content of this file agrees with the observed behaviour.

Still the question remains, why was it preconfigured with this content in the /etc/securetty file? One can assume it has been made for testing purposed, forgot about it, and ended in the image. Or is there a Raspberry Pi specific reason for doing this? Anyhow. I was planning to use this Raspberry Pi headless, so it doesn’t matter at this moment. However I am thinking about using a second Pi as desktop machine.

Well… the mystery has been solved. Let’s continue configuring this thing. Setting it up as NFS server… I am not sure if I have described this before when I’ve set this up on my BeagleBoard. However, due the conversion of ArchLinux to systemd, it would be outdated anyways.

Anyhow, since I’ve typed quite a lot already, the NFS configuration will go to yet another post. I have written two posts and the only thing I’ve done yet is booted it up, set root password and hostname.

PS: I’ve found an interesting link:Small Linux PCs overview

« »