Is there a better way to fix messed up wpa_supplicant and interfaces files on Windows?

Question

Hello I am very new to Raspberry pi having got a Raspi 0 only a few days ago. The only way I know to access any of the code is by ssh-ing from my laptop into the pi, but it worked and I was very happy with it. But then I wanted to go to another house and have the pi automatically connect to both my internet and the other house's. I followed this tutorial and ended up modifying my wpa_supplicant.conf and interfaces files, only to end up locked out of my pi because I could no longer ssh.

I only have Windows computers so I ended up having to do the following to change the files back to normal:

1. Downloaded virtualbox following this tutorial
2. Downloaded the virtualbox extension package for my version of virtualbox
3. Partially followed this tutorial of how to read an SD card into virtualbox
   • NOTE: the USB SD card reader was required
   • NOTE: my computer never checkmarked the USB, it actually said that an error occured, but when I typed the code sudo fdisk -l I could see my USB SD reader
4. I then mounted the card following this tutorial and modified my files before ejecting and celebrating

I ended up fixing my pi and I can now ssh back into it, but this was incredibly annoying to do, and I am wondering if there is a better way that I just missed.

Answer 1

You can put a wpa_supplicant.conf in the boot partition, and it will overwrite any existing.

You can configure wpa_supplicant.conf for multiple networks.

See How to set up networking/WiFi

There is NO WAY to change interfaces, but then there is NO REASON to ever modify it. Just delete it - effectively on Stretch and Buster it does NOTHING.

NOTE that tutorial you linked is hopelessly OBSOLETE, and would perform significantly worse than the default!

I often wonder why so many seem to find poor tutorials by unknown authors when the Foundation has up to date correct instructions.

Answer 2

Of course there are better solutions for troubleshooting instead of following four (outdated?) tutorials. One of it is to use a Linux box instead of a MS Windows computer. You can just boot a live CD of one of the popular Distributions like Debian, Ubuntu or what you like. I would prefer Debian because the Raspberry Pi OS is a flavor of Debian. Now you can direct access all partitions and files on the SD Card using the card reader and mount the partitions on the SD Card.