Running a Headless R-Pi

The Raspberry Pi is an awesome little computer that can feed either a composite video feed, or a HDMI output, however most of the time I want the thing headless, If you set up Rasbian the same way as I showed in the last guide then this will work for you:

A Video 🙂

Getting Terminal access (SSH)

1. Turn Internet sharing on, sharing your connection from Wi-Fi, to Ethernet
2. Plug your R-Pi Ethernet cable first, then power in and wait for a few moments (gives it time to boot).
3. Open a terminal window and type

   cat /private/var/db/dhcpd_leases

   you will get back information regarding your Pi, including the ip address

4. type

   ssh -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no [email protected]{ip address}

5. Now you are in the R-Pi you should run the Raspberry Pi configuration tool

   sudo raspi-config

6. Before doing anything else

   sudo apt-get update
   sudo apt-upgrade

Getting VNC

1. Type

   sudo apt-get install tightvncserver

2. Once you’re back at the Bash prompt you need to set up Tight VNC Server, so type

   vncserver

   and give it a password, unfortunately you can’t leave it blank 🙁 and when you have finished that type

   vncserver :1

3. Download Chicken (used to be Chicken of the VNC), Open and Run
4. In the hostname type the ip address of your R-Pi, the display number you want to connect to (in our case 1), and the password from above.

Setting VNC up as a Demon (auto start)

1. Install netatalk

   sudo apt-get install netatalk

2. Make a file in /etc/init.d:

   sudo nano /etc/init.d/tightvncserver

   with the following content:

   ### BEGIN INIT INFO
   # Provides: vncboot
   # Required-Start: $remote_fs $syslog
   # Required-Stop: $remote_fs $syslog
   # Default-Start: 2 3 4 5
   # Default-Stop: 0 1 6
   # Short-Description: Start VNC Server at boot time
   # Description: Start VNC Server at boot time.
   ### END INIT INFO
   
   #!/bin/bash
   # /etc/init.d/tightvncserver
   #
   # Carry out specific functions when asked to by the system
   
   USER=root
   HOME=/root
   
   export USER HOME
   
   case "$1" incase "$1" in
   start)
     su pi -c '/usr/bin/vncserver -geometry 1440x900'
     echo "Starting VNC server"
     ;;
   stop)
     pkill vncserver
     echo "VNC Server has been stopped (didn't double check though)"
     ;;
   *)
     echo "Usage: /etc/init.d/tightvncserver {start|stop}"
    exit 1
    ;;
   esac
   exit 0
   

3. Make the file executable using

   sudo chmod +x tightvncserver

   sudo update-rc.d tightvncserver defaults

4. Create the avahi rfb service file

   sudo nano /etc/avahi/services/rfb.service

   and add this content:

   <?xml version="1.0" standalone='no'?>
   <!DOCTYPE service-group SYSTEM "avahi-service.dtd">
   <service-group>
     <name replace-wildcards="yes">%h</name>
     <service>
       <type>_rfb._tcp</type>
       <port>5901</port>
     </service>
   </service-group>
   

5. To keep LXDE happy:

   cp -rp /etc/xdg/lxpanel/profile/LXDE/* ~/.config/lxpanel/LXDE/