Overview

This guide will walk you through a headless (no monitor, keyboard, mouse) Raspberry Pi setup.

We'll cover materials, installation, bootstrap a WiFi connection, and optionally configure a hostname & static IP.

Table of Contents

  1. Overview
  2. Table of Contents
  3. Gather the Materials
    1. Hardware
    2. Software
  4. Write Raspbian Image to Mico SD Card
  5. Bootstrap Raspbian Settings
    1. Configure a WiFi connection
    2. Automatically connect WiFi interface
    3. Change Pi’s hostname
    4. Assign a static IP

Gather the Mats

Hardware

Software

  • Latest Raspbian release
    I’m using Raspbian Jessie Lite, which is a headless distro. This Raspbian image is small because GUI libraries/programs (like X) aren’t included by default. Jessie Lite will fit on a 2GB SD card, but the desktop image will require at least 4GB of space**.

Write Raspbian Image

Raspberry Pi provides official guides for each operating system:

Bootstrap Raspbian

How you mount the Raspbian filesystem and edit files also depends on your operating system.

Windows & OS X Instructions - @todo

### Linux Instructions

Configure WiFi connection

  • Run command df -h to list filesystem info.
    /dev/sdb2       7.2G  831M  6.1G  12% /media/userName/c7f58a52-6b71
/dev/sdb1        60M   20M   41M  34% /media/userName/boot
  • cd into the root filesystem, which is /media/userName/c7f58a52-6b71 in the example above.
  • nano etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf to edit the WPA supplicant config.
  • Add the following config:
    network={
        ssid="Network_SSID"
        psk="yourPassword"
    }
  • Ctrl+X and press Y to save.

Connect to Wifi automatically

  • nano etc/network/interfaces
  • Add auto wlan0 to the first line of this file.
  • If you want to use DHCP, append the following to the bottom of this file. Or, assign a static IP instead.
  allow-hotplug wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
iface default inet dhcp
  • Ctrl+X and press Y to save.

Change Pi’s hostname (optional)

  • nano etc/hosts
  127.0.0.1       localhost
#The following config should be used for IPv6
::1             localhost ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
ff02::1         ip6-allnodes
ff02::2         ip6-allrouters
#Raspberry Pi's new host name
127.0.1.1       newhostname
  • Ctrl+X and press Y to save.
  • nano etc/hostname
   newhostname
  • Ctrl+X and press Y to save.

Assign Static IP

  • ifconfig -a from a machine connected to the same Wifi network, or from a Pi currently using DHCP.
  • Take note of inet addr, Bcast, and Mask
  • route -n
  • Take note of the Gateway Address and Destination Address.
  • nano etc/network/interfaces and add the following:
allow-hotplug wlan0
iface wlan0 inet static
    address <desired IP address>
    netmask <Mask>
    broadcast <Bcast>
    network <destination address>
    gateway <gateway address>
wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

Unmout the Micro SD card and boot up the Raspberry Pi!

The default password is raspberry.

  $ ssh pi@raspberrypi
  
  # If you don't have a nameserver, use the Pi's IP.
# You can find the Pi's IP in your router's DHCP lease list
# Or setup a static IP
$ ssh pi@10.11.12.13

And you’re ready to go! I recommend running sudo apt-get update & sudo apt-get upgrade, then setup key-based authentication and user accounts.