How to headless set up your raspberry pi.

Ahoy

Writing this because everytime I format the SD Card I forgot how to set the headless way.

Table of Contents

NEW

Today it is much easier to set up the sd card to boot on your raspberry pi!

  • Install the Raspberry Pi Imager
  • Open the software, and after choose an OS click on the right-below setting icon
  • NOW the wi-fi configurations can be assigned here, without the necessity to open previously the directories and create files. To older way of configure, see below.

Setting Up

(On Linux Terminal)

After installing the OS on the sd card, open the boot folder and create the two files on root:

  • ssh
  • wpa_supplicant.conf

At wpa_supplicant.conf save with the following code:

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

network={
scan_ssid=1
ssid="your_wifi_ssid"
psk="your_wifi_password"
}

Boot the sd card on the raspberry pi and wait a few minutes until it properly connects.

After it, access through terminal with sudo ssh pi@raspberrypi.local.

The default password is raspberry.

VNC access

Inside the ssh access, configure the VNC with sudo raspi-config following:

  • Interface Options
    • VNC
      • Yes to enable VNC Server

Then, open the connection with VNC Viewer with the credentials (if default):

user raspberrypi.local
passwd raspberry

Troubleshoot

You may bump on some

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@       WARNING: POSSIBLE DNS SPOOFING DETECTED!          @
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

or

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@    WARNING: REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED!     @
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

In case of one of that or both, just access your ssh file with cd ~/.ssh/ and change the known_hosts file with sudo nano known_hosts. In the file, just delete (crtl+k) the lines containing raspberrypi.local. And that’s it!

Update! (20/06/2022)

Actually, the path may be different and it will be shown on the Terminal. Maybe it’s on /var/root/.ssh/known_hosts.