Getting rpi-connect-lite to work

Community Tutorials
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Hi dear community,

Today I installed DietPi the first time in order to resurrect on old Raspberyy Pi 1 B+ in order to use it as a WiFi-ethernet-bridge and DCHP-server on the ethernet subnet side (with dnsmaq).

Knowing that DietPi-Dashboard also provides a web-console, I still liked the ease of (remote) use of pi connect through `rpi-connect-lite` but struggled a bit to get it working as there seem to be a few differences compared with Raspberry Pi OS.

After a bit of fiddling, this is how I got it up and running and I hope this may be useful for someone else with a similar desire. A few things need to be set up manually still after the initial run but this could possibly also scripted in `/boot/Automation_Custom_Script.sh` but I did not have the time yet to piece this together so far.

  • in dietpi.txt:
    • add `rpi-connect-lite` to AUTO_SETUP_APT_INSTALLS
    • set `AUTO_SETUP_AUTOMATED=1`
    • set `AUTO_SETUP_AUTOSTART_LOGIN_USER=dietpi` (optional, plus I also renamed the user but that should not make any difference here)
  • in the meantime, log into https://connect.raspberrypi.com/settings and create a new auth key.
  • after the initial install has completed, get a user prompt and run (as user!)
    • sudo systemctl unmask systemd-logind
    • sudo systemctl start dbus systemd-logind
      • note: I did not need to install dbus as it was already installed, probably pulled in as a dependency of rpi-connect-lite?
    • rpi-connect on
    • rpi-connect signin --auth-key=rpuak_<rest-of-your-auth-key>
    • sudo loginctl enable-linger $USER
      • this step differs from what most Raspberry Pi OS tutorials out there mention; omitting sudo (+ $USERat the end) here will let the command fail as DietPi lacks polkitd / pkttyagent. With this construct however, one can avoid installing those packages.

Afterwards, my Pi running DietPi was showing up in the devices section of pi connect and I was able to open a remote shell into it. :partying_face: