Raspberry Pi Headless configuration

Tags: Raspberry PI

In this tutorial we configure the Raspberry Pi in headless mode. This mode can be interesting when using the microcomputer without a screen. The main advantage is a lighter installation without the desktop and unnecessary software.

Configuring your Raspberry headless

download and write the Raspberry Pi OS Lite image file to the SD card

Authorize ssh access

to authorise ssh access, create an empty file called ssh in the /boot/ folder on the partition (WITHOUT EXTENSION)

Configuring the WiFi connection

At the root of the partition, create a file wpa_supplicant.conf

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

network={
    ssid="wifi_ssid"
    psk="wifi_password"
    key_mgt="WPA-PSK"
}

Recover your Raspberry Pi’s IP address

There are several ways to recover the IP address of your Raspberry Pi.

use your box’s management page to display connections
scan IP addresses using arp -a (Windows

Connecting with ssh

If the Raspberry Pi is connected to the network, it can be accessed via ssh with the ip address, login and password. By default, the logins are:

login: pi
password: raspberry

ssh pi@192.168.1.0 #replace with raspberry pi ip adress

You can now access your Raspberry Pi in Headless mode. To make it easier to use in this mode, here are a few tips.

Browsing on multiple terminals

You can navigate through different terminal tabs using the Alt+F1-F12 keys, allowing you to run up to 12 terminals in parallel. This can be very handy when you want to:

run tasks in parallel
perform tasks with different users
run continuous tasks such as htop in the background

Copy the contents of a USB stick

the usb stick should appear under media

To check that the USB key has been recognized, enter the following command and note the volume name (in this case sda1)

lsblk --fs

To mount the USB key in a folder, we use the mount command.

mkdir /home/pi/mntusb
sudo mount /dev/sda1 /home/pi/mntusb

Once the USB key has been mounted correctly, you can copy the files to your Raspberry with the cp c ommand

cp home/pi/mntusb/myfile.txt home/pi/myfile.txt

N.B.: If exfat is not recognized, enter
sudo apt-get install exfat-fuse exfat-utils
Then reboot the Raspberry Pi

Before removing your storage volume, use the umount command

sudo umount /dev/sda1