Raspberry Pi Set up Headless Mode on a Mac

22 Oct 2020

Efficiently setting up a Raspberry Pi is always a bit tricky. But it doesnt have to be.

Today, I set it up rather easily, adapting from Desertbot.io

Here are the steps I followed:

Step 1

Get Raspberry Pi Imager

Step 2

Plug in the SD card, and using the Raspberry Pi imager, flash an operating system of your choice. I just used the recommended Raspberry OS.

Step 3

Wifi settings are always tricky, so I initially set up my zero using SSH over USB, following the instructions here, and repeated concisely below.

Check the volumes:

ls -ls /Volumes/

which should show a boot directory.

Step 4

Enable ssh:

touch /Volumes/boot/ssh

Step 5

Edit /Volumes/boot/config.txt and append to the bottom:

dtoverlay=dwc2

Step 6

Edit /Volumes/boot/cmdline.txt. After rootwait, append this text leaving only one space between rootwait and the new text (otherwise it might not be parsed correctly):

modules-load=dwc2,g_ether

If there was any text after the new text make sure that there is only one space between that text and the new text

Step 7

Put the SD card into the Zero

Plug the zero to the computer using ONLY the usb cable (no power cable)

Monitor System Preferences Network panel RNDIS/Ethernet Gadget status to check if the IP address is assigned to the zero.

Step 8

Once booted, log in

ssh pi@raspberrypi.local

password: raspberry

Step 9

Set up the wifi connection (from inside the raspi ssh)

sudo raspi-config

Done

This should be enough to having it set up correctly. No wpa_supplicant needed!

To power off the raspi safely, simply run

sudo poweroff