Raspberry Pi Tutorial 1 - Mac Headless Setup 2017 UPDATE

How to setup your Raspberry Pi Headless - now updated to reflect recent (Nov 2016) Raspbian operating system changes! In this tutorial I show you how to download, unpack, and flash a micro SD card with the Raspbian operating system and configure your Raspberry Pi for a headless setup.

A headless setup is one where you do not require a mouse, keyboard and monitor connected to your Raspberry Pi. This make the Pi even better - you can log in using any computer on your home network!

In my next tutorial I show you how to access the desktop of the Raspberry Pi remotely.

This tutorial was made in response to updates from the Raspberry Pi Foundation's operating system Raspbian. Prior to the November 2016 release, SSH was enabled by default. However this posed a security risk for those connecting their pis to networks and being ignorant of this standard and easily accessible backdoor. Now SSH is disabled by default and we have to work around this. Don't worry: it's straight forward!

If you are running the latest Mac OS (Sierra onward), apparently you can't save files using TextEdit like I show. Don't worry there is a work around:

Open up the terminal on your mac.

The default directory in terminal will likely be your Users/Zan/ directory. You can confirm this by typing in "pwd" without quotations. This will list your "present working directory."

Then type 'nano ssh'. This will start up the nano text editor and create a file called 'ssh' without an extension.

Write something. Anything into the file.

Hit Ctrl+X to quit.
It will prompt you if you want to save.
Hit 'y'
It will prompt you for a file name and should show 'ssh'.
Just hit enter.
Copy this file from the directory using your finder to the SD card.

[sadafmoaveninejad]

After 2 days trynig all solutions, finally my reaspberrypi connected to my .MacBook
Thank you so much Alex :)

to creat ssh it is better to use terminal as:

touch /Volumes/boot/ssh

[kenstephenson]

I have zero clue about raspberry & computers in general but this video was helpful. i watched 2-3 others, followed the instructions and it didnt work. love the way pifiller does it all for you

[prakhardixit]

Thank you so much for this video. After wasting almost 2 days into busting my humps at how to solve "Connection refused" error after the November 2016 update, finally it's all done. Can't thank you enough.

[chriskaprys]

thank you so much for this updated version!
i nearly put my head through a brick wall reading all over online how to set this up (trying first with NOOBS then with Raspbian). finally happened to scroll down on a forum somewhere to find a down-voted solution saying to drop a null file called SSH in the FAT partition of the card (like you explain in this video). voila! SSH is (actually) up and running now!

[jimmylostigen]

Perfect tutorial! I didn't have a router between so I had to configure a dhcp on my local mac, didn't know how but I figured it out. It could be a good thing to cover.

[sergio]

4 years later still works like a charm

[wevegonetouring]

this worked a treat once I'd followed the recommend of LaRue Allegretto. Thanks

[rachellabouve]

amazing tutorial, straight forward and simple, , thank you

[anniyangX]

I couldn't ping or ssh the raspberry pi after I unplugged the ethernet cable. Does anyone know how to solve this?

[ferdinandp]

thanks dude this has been really helpful!

[themonochromefactory]

is the enthernet in raspberry connected to the mac ? How do you connect raspberry pi 3 to wifi headlessly?

[NetvoTV]

i have the card in NOON which is the preinstalled card, do i have to go to download the raspbrian or its ok with that?

[Tastiepop]

Hey Alex! Thanks for this video.

I'm not able to ping my raspberrypi, though. I made sure the ssh file was in boot. Getting back message, "cannot resolve raspberrypi.local: unknown host"

[hridoygovindadas]

Random question. I just lost the ability to minimize a window in raspbian. Any advice?

[tonyryan]

Can you tell me where is the other end of the Internet cable?

[movietheme]

I am getting unknown host when I try to ping my pi....

[ii]

can you do the same thing with raspbian stretch?

[loloxfx]

after I put the debian OS with P Filler into the SD card, my computer said that "the disk inserted is not readable". I erased the card and did that again for several times. But it still doesn't work. So now I couldn't make a ssh file there :(

[AgastyaAsthana]

Hi Alex,
the new Mac OS doesn't have the same saving screen as your does so by default I have to save the ssh file as .rtf or ..txt nothing else! Can you help me?

[NotReaVides]

each time I try to connect it give my the following error in terminal
ssh: connect to host 169.254.146.208 port 22: Operation timed out
does anyone have a clue on how I can solve this