Yesterday I got a raspberry pi4 together with a micro SD Card which is preloaded with Raspberry PI OS (32-bit).
I don't have a separate keyboard or mouse but I do have a laptop (a Mac) and so I decided to go for a headless connection.
As per the instruction "If you want to enable SSH, all you need to do is to put a file called ssh in the /boot/ directory" I issued the commands "cd /Volumes/boot" and "touch shh" in Terminal which gave me to which I got the response "ssh: Read-only file system".
And ever since I've been trying to figure out how to get the micro SD card writable. Changing the lever on the SD card holder does not help nor does recreating the image using the Raspberry PI Imager.
Any idea what I need to do to get the micro SD card writable (or any other way to allow me to access the raspberry from my Mac ?
Update 08 Jan-21
Thanks for all these suggestions. See below the output.
- Micro SD card is brand new (purchased at the rapsberry online webshop)
- Micro SD card is inserted in SD card 'holder'
- Switch on SD card holder is set to unlocked
- SD card holder is inserted in stick that connects to Mac with a USB-C adapter
- Ran "diskutil list" command:
% diskutil list
/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: FDisk_partition_scheme *63.9 GB disk2
1: Windows_FAT_32 boot 268.4 MB disk2s1
2: Linux 3.7 GB disk2s2
(free space) 59.9 GB -
- Ran "ls -l | grep boot" command
% ls -l | grep boot
drwxrwxrwx@ 1 be022692 staff 3584 Dec 2 13:02 boot
To make sure I can write on the card I subsequently used Raspberry PI Imager app to put another OS on the card (LibreElec). See below output
- Ran "diskutil list" command /dev/disk2 (external, physical): #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0: FDisk_partition_scheme *63.9 GB disk2 1: Windows_FAT_32 LIBREELEC 536.9 MB disk2s1 2: Linux 33.6 MB disk2s2 (free space) 63.3 GB -
- Ran "ls -l | grep LIBREELEC command" drwxrwxrwx@ 1 be022692 staff 16384 Oct 24 18:05 LIBREELEC
- Ran Disk Utility
In both instances the FAT folders "boot" and "LIBREELEC" are read-only so impossible to add files.
What would you suggest as best way forward ?
/Volumes/boot
is the RasPiOS boot section and not your MacOS boot partition? Please list the entries under/Volumes
before and after connecting your SD to the Mac.LIBREELEC
proves the SD card is write-able, but beyond that it doesn't help much - we need to seeboot
. Also, please learn the MD formatting as it makes things so much easier to read - review the change I made in your Q for an example. I'm running some experiments on my RPi SD card on my Mac now. P.S. You never told us which version of macOS you're using - please do that.