/raspberrypi-headless-setup

Source files for the "How to setup your headless RaspberryPi" blog

Primary LanguageShell

Raspberry Pi Headless Setup

Check the article here for a step-by-step guide:

Setup

  1. Insert SD card into your local machine
  2. Flash the SD with the appropriate OS, I recommend using raspberry-imager (you may need to reconnect your SD card after the flash process)
  3. When the SD write (and verification) is complete, open the terminal

Enable ssh

touch /Volumes/boot/ssh

Add WIFI for headless

1. Create the config file

touch  /Volumes/boot/wpa_supplicant.conf

2. Add your WIFI details

Adjusting for your ISO 3166 alpha-2 country code, network name and network password:

Using vscode:

code /Volumes/boot/wpa_supplicant.conf

For example:

ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1
country=PT

network={
	ssid="An-example-wifi"
	psk="this_pw_is_fake1"
	key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
	priority=1
	id_str="home"
}

network={
	ssid="Another-wifi_name"
	psk="anotherFakePassword!"
	key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
	priority=2
	id_str="office"
}

network={
	ssid="Yet_another"
	psk="super_secret_password"
	key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
	priority=3
	id_str="factory"
}

Verify all went well

cat /Volumes/boot/wpa_supplicant.conf

Boot up

  1. Eject your SD card
  2. Insert the SD card to your raspi
  3. Connect power source
  4. The LEDs should start flashing, wait for your pi to boot up

SSH into your pi

ssh pi@raspberrypi.local

Default password for pi user is raspberry

Recommended

Change default password

sudo passwd
  1. Type your password
  2. Confirm new password

You should see a message

passwd: password updated successfully

If you get an error:

passwd: Authentication token manipulation error
passwd: password unchanged

It means the filesystem was mounted as read-only, which prevents changing the password. A way to fix this issue is to remount the filesystem and then to check permissions of /etc/shadow file.

sudo mount -rw -o remount /

or

sudo mount -o remount,rw /

Expand storage

sudo raspi-config

  1. Advanced options

  2. Select first option

A1 Expand File System

(Optional) Change your pi's hostname

This might come in handy for two reasons:

  1. Easily distinguish between devices

  2. Easily ssh locally with ssh pi@your_custom_hostname.local

sudo raspi-config

  1. Network Options

  2. N1 Hostname -> OK

  3. Set the new hostname

Remove Bloatware on the Raspberry Pi

sudo curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/JoaquimLey/raspberrypi-headless-setup/master/pi_bloat_remove.sh | sudo bash

Setup ngrok

I use ngrok to remotely ssh to my pi's. The free account is more than enough for this use case. Beware though, the port is constantly changing and the connections drop fairly frequently, can be a little bit frustrating.

  1. Create a free account at https://ngrok.com/
  2. Download ngrok for Linux ARM
sudo wget https://bin.equinox.io/c/4VmDzA7iaHb/ngrok-stable-linux-arm.zip
  1. Configure and start the service on boot using a symlink: https://github.com/JoaquimLey/ngrok-install

Install git

sudo apt-get install git

Update packages to the latest version

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt full-upgrade