complete headless install with pi0? Topic is solved

[ahoier]

so i got the pi zero w (no onboard wifi...) I do have a wifi dongle for it, and was wondering if this will work for dietpi? I managed to get Raspian to load fine though it's bulky for what I'm looking to use the zero for......simple pi-hole + piVPN for starters. anyways, i flashed the file to my card, modified the config files per some random youtube videos (i know...lol sounds horrible) FWIW, https://youtu.be/vlMpn9u0Y4o was the video I followed. the pi has been plugged in now for at least a half hour, the green status light is now solid (not flickering any longer)....and when I pinged the pi I'm getting destination unreachable still...so for shits and giggles i decided to connect my microHDMI to HDMI adapter to the pi and my TV and appears I'm "stuck" at a login prompt but i dont have a keyboard and was expecting to do this "setup" under ssh. any ideas where I messed up (well, other than buying the pi without onboard wifi lol)?

[Joulinar]

Hi,

your main problem is the missing network connection. Did you configured WiFi upfront/before first boot ?

[ahoier]

yes in the options file, atleast thought i did. everything was in single ' rather than " is that correct?

When I plugged it back into my laptop card reader i noticed the config file is now gone...where would i find those settings at?

[Joulinar]

the initial wifi config file is removed after first boot as it is needed to setup thinks only. During normal operation network interface configuration is stored in /etc/network/interfaces while wifi information located at /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

Bad think, we don't know if your external usb adaptor is detected correctly by the board and we don't know what the name of this usb interface is. As you don't have a keyboard attached, we even could not check it...

[ahoier]

yea unfortunately under Chromebook it only appears to let me see the "boot" partition i guess is what it's called.

viewtopic.php?t=9 he shows the SSID in " but should be quoted with ' or " quotes? Or none at all? lol cause ive noticed in the other files no quotes being used, but quotes are references in this section?

[Joulinar]

Hi,

the post you linked is quite old. I would recommend using our new online docs https://dietpi.com/docs/install/
Right before section 3. Prepare the first boot, you will find the information regading WiFi settings. Basically add your details between the single quote

Code: Select all

aWIFI_SSID[0]='yourSSID'
aWIFI_KEY[0]='yourKEY'

[ahoier]

odd. still the same result with the single quotes. like it's not connecting to my network.

something that caught my eye though

ifup: failed to bring up wlan0?

but my usb dongle has power....lol. and obviously the pi zero does too. FWIW, the dongle is plugged into the "lower" USB port, and I have the "middle" usb port plugged into my wall adapter.

[Joulinar]

I don't use a wifi dongle, so I'm not 100% sure on it. But probably the WiFi dongle is not using wlan0. Maybe it's a different interface

@MichaIng
Maybe you have any experience on this

[ahoier]

thanks for the ping, hoping someone else has some insight LOL. as i mentioned, it worked quite flawlessly (though bulky for my current needs...) using Raspian...lol. so that's why i wanted to try out the dietpi route cause I read reports of "failing sd cards" which DietPi is supposed to have some "better protections" in place lol.

[Joulinar]

Well DietPi is nothing else than an extreme lightweight Raspberry OS with reduced amounts of packages installed. As well DietPi aims to reduce r/w operation on SD card as much as possible.