rocky-rpi-headless

Enable headless access to a fresh new Rocky Linux installation on a Raspberry Pi.

About

Why do I need that?

To be able to access the device remotely (via ssh) since its first boot.

Plug the network cable and the power cable and it's ready.

No need to plug the screen or keyboard into the device to do the first access.

How it is done?

The rc.local script runs after the first boot assigning the manual static IP configuration and making sure sshd is running.

How to use:

1. Download and install Rocky Linux for Raspberry Pi (Raspberry Pi (aarch64)) on an SD card, following its original instructions.

(Perform tasks "2.", "4.", "5." and "8." using sudo privileges)

2. With Rocky Linux installed on the SD card, access the rootfs and edit the file /etc/rc.d/rc.local (example: sudo vim etc/rc.d/rc.local) adding the following line:

[[ -f "/home/rocky/rocky-rpi-headless.sh" ]] && /home/rocky/rocky-rpi-headless.sh

3. Clone/Download this repo and copy the rocky-rpi-headless.sh script to /home/rocky/ directory in the SD card's rootfs.

4. Edit the /home/rocky/rocky-rpi-headless.sh script assigning the desired values for IP, GATEWAY, and DNS addresses.

5. Make rc.local and rocky-rpi-headless.sh (in the SD card) executable:

sudo chmod +x home/rocky/rocky-rpi-headless.sh
sudo chmod +x etc/rc.d/rc.local

(Make sure you execute the commands above in the root directory of SD card rootfs partition.)

6. Eject and remove the SD card from your computer, place it in the Raspberry Pi and turn on the device. After a few seconds, the lights might stop flashing, time to ssh into the device.

7. From your machine, try to ssh into the device using the IP address you assigned to the device and using the default Rocky Linux user rocky (pwd rockylinux) as seen in the Rocky Linux for Raspberry Pi's original instructions:

ssh rocky@<IP-ADDRESS>

8. If you managed to access the device, remove the /home/rocky/rocky-rpi-headless.sh script:

sudo rm ~/rocky-rpi-headless.sh

... and remove the line that executes this script in the /etc/rc.d/rc.local file.

Debug

The script generates the file /tmp/rc-local-log.txt in the SD card's rootfs partition.

This file has output generated after the script's configuration is applied, showing:

• Connection status
• IP addresses of all network interfaces and connections
• sshd status
• firewalld allowed services

If you started the device but could not access it via ssh, you can power it off, remove the SD card, put it back on your computer, and inspect this file for quick insights.

You may also check /var/log/messages in the rootfs partition for general logs.

Credits:

Inspired and/or helped by:

• https://github.com/mesca/alpine_headless
• Skip Grube
• Ian Walker
• Neil Hannon