How to set up a Static IP on Raspberry Pi 5 with Raspbian - dhcpcd.conf missing

Question

I am trying to set up a static IP lease on Raspberry Pi 5. The /etc/dhcpcd.conf file does not exist and dhcpcd is not installed. Following the latest guides does not work. I ideally don't need to use DHCP, but if there's a way that works with either option I'm open to suggestions.

I'm starting to wonder whether the Pi 5 been set up correctly.

I am unable to install any packages since I do not have internet. Is there any long lasting method that could work?

Answer 1

This is a useful guide, Raspberry Pi OS is basically Debian, with Bookwork being largely the same as the Debian Bookworm release. This guide was helpful for me. - https://itslinuxfoss.com/set-up-static-ip-address-debian-12-linux/

Answer 2

I see you've found an answer, so this is just FYI:

The people who run the RPi manufacturing operation decided to replace dhcpcd with nmcli as the default DHCP client program for the bookworm release. However, as I understand it, dhcpcd remains in the distribution (or certainly available for the price of a sudo apt install dhcpcd), so you can continue to use it - at least for a while.

And since this is an "FYI" kind of answer, I'll opine that dhcpcd is a pretty good DHCP client. It's still actively maintained by Roy Marples, and recently upgraded to ver 10. I feel that part of the reason that dhcpcd fell out of favor with the RPi manufacturing consortium was that they (and Debian) let it languish... they decided to stick with version 8 instead of following the upstream releases. Why?... I don't know, you'll have to ask them.

If you decide you do want to stick with dhcpcd, you have a couple of options:

1. Stick with the old-ish version 8.1.2.

2. If you want the latest version (ver 10) you'll need to build it from source.

Finally, wrt to your comment, "I'm starting to wonder whether the Pi 5 been set up correctly.". Yeah - you're not alone. :)

Answer 3

The first Raspberry Pi OS that supports Raspberry Pi 5 manages the network settings by default with NetworkManager, as per https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/bookworm-the-new-version-of-raspberry-pi-os/

To set a static IP of 192.168.1.50:

$ nmcli connection modify help
[...]
Examples:
nmcli con mod em1-1 ipv4.method manual ipv4.addr "192.168.1.2/24, 10.10.1.5/8"

$ nmcli con show
NAME                UUID                                  TYPE      DEVICE 
Wired connection 1  aaaaaaaa-aaaa-aaaa-aaaa-aaaaaaaaaaaa  ethernet  eth0   
MyWiFi              bbbbbbbb-bbbb-bbbb-bbbb-bbbbbbbbbbbb  wifi      wlan0  
lo                  cccccccc-cccc-cccc-cccc-cccccccccccc  loopback  lo     

$ nmcli con show "Wired connection 1" | tee original_network_settings.txt

$ sudo nmcli con mod "Wired connection 1" ipv4.method manual ipv4.addr 192.168.1.50/24