How-To: Setup a Headless Raspberry Pi

Headless-Pi.md

The below is tested with the June 2017 release of Raspbian Jessie, for setting up a Pi without any local peripherals connected.

Main steps

1. Flash Raspbian image (see below)
2. Create empty file named ssh in root of SD card
3. Create wpa_supplicant.conf in root of SD card (see below)
4. Eject and put SD card in Pi
5. ssh pi@raspberrypi.local (or otherwise find IP address)
6. sudo raspi-config
   1. Change pi user's password
   2. Change hostname
   3. Enable VNC access (Interfacing options -> VNC)
7. Configure VNC Connect for Cloud access (see below)
8. Reboot
9. sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y && sudo apt dist-upgrade

Flashing instructions (macOS)

1. Open Disk Utility
2. Select SD's partition, note "Device" name (disk#s#) <- First digit
3. Eject partition (not disk) from Disk Utility
4. sudo dd bs=1m if=path_of_your_image.img of=/dev/rdisk#

wpa_supplicant.conf syntax

network={
    ssid="NETWORK NAME"
    psk="PASSWORD"
}
network={
    ssid="NETWORK NAME 2"
    psk="PASSWORD 2"
}

Configuring VNC Connect for Cloud

1. TODO

Raspbian Lite only:

Ensure package libxkbcommon0 is installed

Retropie (with Pixel) only:

Ensure package gksu is installed