Raspberry Pi is a fun device to play with but sometimes we wish it can be a tad speedier. In this post I will show you how I did to speed up my rpi. I am running Debian on my rpi so some of the methods might not work for you if you are using different distro.
1. Overclock
With the newest Debian wheezy, simply run raspi-config, then overclock, OK, choose the one that works for you, choose OK. I settled with 900Mhz because once I use 950MHz, come tasks (such as compilings) could not run properly. Also check out http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/tag/overclocking for more information on overclocking rpi.
2. Adjust memory split
By default I got only 184MB of usuable RAM for the system because the rest of the 256MB goes to GPU. While you are still at raspi-config’s top menu, choose memory_split. If you run your rpi primarily as a headless server (not running X), just pick the one with the highest system RAM option (240), OK.
Note: method 1 and 2 require restart to take effect.
3. Find out auto-start services and de-select those that don’t need to auto-start
For example, if you only need mysql server once a while, it makes no sense to make it run when rpi boots. A simple way to find out what processes are started during boot is through a program sysv-rc-conf (not installed by default). Install and fire it up through:
1 | sudo apt-get install sysv-rc-conf |