Raspian Stretch Lite is assigning strange 169.254.x.x IP address

Question

I just installed Raspian Stretch (2017-09-07) on a RPi Model 1 B. Upon first boot up, eth0 gets an IP address of 169.254.x.x..

On my network, I just have a normal Century Link modem/router that used DHCP and assigns IPs in the range of 192.168.0.x subnet. An extremely common and simple setup for your average home network.

Why isn't the Raspberry Pi getting a 192.168.x.x address like every other device on the network? I also notice in /etc/networks:

default        0.0.0.0
loopback       127.0.0.0
link-local     169.254.0.0

What is this 169.254.x.x network? And why is my RPi choosing to use this as it's IP address instead of getting a DHCP address? It seems like you shouldn't have to manually configure the IP address with a setup like this.

Answer 1

A 169.254.x.x means the Pi has a physical ethernet Link, but cannot get an IP address from your router/DHCP server. There could be many reasons for this e.g a bad cable

Answer 2

This is a Link-local address.

It is normally used to communicate to the immediately attached device, and indicates NO DHCP server is found.