Getting started with raspberry pi B+

Question

I just got r-pi B+ and flashed an 8gb sd card with 'pidora'. But I am stuck at the logging in process. I don't have a display for the r-pi. All I have is a laptop running Fedora 20 and a raspberry pi model B+ and a lan cable and a power supply adaptor. And a wireless network. Router isn't accessible.

Please help me getting started. I have been searching things online for 2 days now and all I find is how to use Putty to get started. I want to connect the raspberry pi to the laptop via the Lan cable.

Answer 1

I suppose you have an WLAN adapter attached to your PI so you are able to connect to your WLAN. I suggest to connect your Pi to your labtop via cable, ssh into the box, update /etc/network/interfaces to use the WLAN adapter, unplug the cable and use the following command to find the IP address of your Pi (adapt the network definition to your local environment)

sudo nmap -sP 192.168.0.0/24 | awk '/^Nmap/{ip=$NF}/B8:27:EB/{print ip}'

and then connect with ssh.

Another way suggested by elParaguayo is to mount the SD card on the machine that you used to flash the card in the first place and edit the interfaces file that way.

Answer 2

It seems that there is an easy solution, I met the same problem before. To solve your problem, you need to do these things:

1. Enable ssh service in your raspberry pi. See this

2. open a browser in another computer, and type 192.168.0.1 to go to your router setting page, and find out the dhcp client list, then look up your pi ip address, remember it.

3. type ssh pi@(*your pi ip address*) to connect your pi in a terminal, then have fun playing pi.

Answer 3

adafruit has a usb to serial adapter for under $10. It plugs into the usb of your regular PC/laptop (whatever) and attaches to 3 (or 4) of the GPIO pins on the Pi. It becomes the serial keyboard. See their tutorial.

You will still attach your monitor directly to the Pi

Answer 4

I have only confirmed this works with Raspbian, btw...

If you just wanted to connect directly to your laptop, you can specify a static IP address on the same subnet as your laptop in the cmdline.txt in the root directory of your flashed (Raspbian) SD card. You just make sure your ethernet port on your laptop is set to obtain an address automatically (DHCP). Then add an ip address in the self assigned IP range at the end of the cmdline.txt like this:

dwc_otg.lpm_enable=0 console=ttyAMA0,115200 console=tty1 root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rootfstype=ext4 elevator=deadline rootwait ip=169.254.0.2

You can just edit the file directly on the SD card. Save the file. Eject the SD card and return it to the pi. Plug your network cable into your laptop and the other end into the pi. Boot up the pi and after a minute, you should be able to access it via SSH at the IP address you assigned.

Here's is some more detail: http://pihw.wordpress.com/guides/direct-network-connection/in-a-nut-shell-direct-network-connection/

Good luck

Answer 5

I had a similar problem with Pidora. I had used Fedora 18 and I thought Pidora would be the same. I have a few steps for you:

1. Try installing NOOBS on the SD Card. I know it's a bigger file, but it's a long-term investment
2. If you have a TV, HDMI Cable, and Mouse OR Keyboard, you can connect it to the TV. If you don't, you might have to buy/borrow one...
3. I believe that SSH is not available without an OS installed, so you should probably use a mouse/keyboard from a desktop computer, and borrow a friend's TV if you don't have em.