Configuring Raspberry OS for the First Time

We just prepared a SD card with Raspberry OS. It’s now time to plug the SD into the raspberry pi for the initial boot. However before we do so there are some first time settings we will configure.

Headless Setup

To speed up the setup process there are some configurations that can be made before we put the SD card into the raspberry pi and boot up. We will want to configure our Wifi network if not using a wired connection. Additionally we should enable SSH so we can access the pi remotely without needing to hook up a mouse and keyboard to it.

Setup Wifi (Headless)

Navigate to the SD card root folder. Its typically named boot. Inside this folder you will see various operating system files. In the root folder of the SD card we want to create a wpa_supplicant.conf file with our network credentials. This file will be discovered on boot and copy to the correct location for us.

The contents of your config file should look like:

ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1
country=US

network={
    ssid="<Wifi network name here>"
    psk="<Secret password here>"
}

Enable SSH (Headless)

By default raspberry OS has SSH disabled. We will want to enable this allow remote access and make the rest of your work easier. Otherwise our connection will be refused why trying to connect through SSH. Simply create another file in the root folder of the SD card named ssh. Note there is no file extension. This file can be empty. On boot the raspberry pi will detect this file and enable SSH.

Insert the SD Card and Boot the Raspberry Pi

Now put the SD card we just burned the image to into the raspberry pi and boot up the pi.

Login to Your Raspberry Pi

By default your password is raspberry and the user is pi. You will want to change this for security reasons. Raspberry pi foundation provides a great page on more steps to Securing your Raspberry Pi. Since we added those configurations before booting the pi should be connecting to the Wifi in the background once you turn it on. We also enabled SSH so we can connect to our pi remotely.

Remote Access and Remaining Software Installs

Our raspberry pi is now ready for us to remotely access and finish installing any other software we would like.