Enabling and connecting to a raspberry pi

[S_Steven]

I am going on a limp right now and I'm going to ask the following.

Given that the ssh is disabled and that I'm using a Windows 8 machine with putty installed, I would like to know the easiest way to enable ssh and connect to my Raspberry Pi Zero W with installed Rapspbian Stretch (2018 edition).

Before someone says that there are tutorials I have already tried two (this one and this one) that have worked in the past for me but now I keep getting an error message from Putty that says mycfavisit.com

Unable to open connection to raspberrypi.local

Host does not exist

So, can you suggest to me a solution?

[webbsmurfen]

What do you mean? Cant you just enable vncserver and connect to it from remote desktop in win 8 and enable SSH from there?

[pcmanbob]

Hi.

Remove the SD card from your pi, place it in a card reader and connect it to your pc ,

open computer on pc and select SD card, now right click and select new, text document , change the file name to ssh.txt or ssh.

eject SD card place in pi and boot ssh should then be enabled.

assuming pi and pc are on the same router / network log in to router and look at list of connected devices, to find pi IP, use that IP in putty to log on to pi.

or use one of the IP scanners here https://geekflare.com/network-scanner/ to find your pi IP.

might have helped if you had actually told us which tutorials you had tried. ( I have already tried two (this one and this one) )

[Boibelo]

Hi,
I have the same error message but my first troubleshooting points more towards an HW issue rather than SW :
1. My Pi zero W worked perfectly headless through SSH with Raspian Buster Lite and I could stream video through my home network.

2. After imaging my SD card with Win32Diskimager as a back-up procedure, I was not able to see my Pi zero anymore.

3. I check networks connection from my same Windows7 laptop. I tried to ping my Pi Zero but did not appear with "arp -a".

4. I created a brand new SD card with Raspbian Buster Lite and use the general raspberrypi.local as before but I could not ping it

5. I used a brand new Pi Zero and both SD cards were functional and I could connect through SSH with both cards, same power plug, same network, same PC.

The defective Pi Zero seems to start working as usual though with the green led flashing like the functional one. I don't have any hdmi cable to figure out what's happening during this booting process. But I'll buy one.
I did not go through any visible electric glitch. I have just manipulate it by hand for 5min or so. Is the pi Zero sensitive to ESD more than other boards? Is there any electric checks I could do on some of the components ?

Any clue, proposal, hints from you ?

Thanks a lot for your help. The pi zero is very important for my entire module.

[pcmanbob]

Hi,
I have the same error message but my first troubleshooting points more towards an HW issue rather than SW :
1. My Pi zero W worked perfectly headless through SSH with Raspian Buster Lite and I could stream video through my home network.

2. After imaging my SD card with Win32Diskimager as a back-up procedure, I was not able to see my Pi zero anymore.

3. I check networks connection from my same Windows7 laptop. I tried to ping my Pi Zero but did not appear with "arp -a".

4. I created a brand new SD card with Raspbian Buster Lite and use the general raspberrypi.local as before but I could not ping it

5. I used a brand new Pi Zero and both SD cards were functional and I could connect through SSH with both cards, same power plug, same network, same PC.

The defective Pi Zero seems to start working as usual though with the green led flashing like the functional one. I don't have any hdmi cable to figure out what's happening during this booting process. But I'll buy one.
I did not go through any visible electric glitch. I have just manipulate it by hand for 5min or so. Is the pi Zero sensitive to ESD more than other boards? Is there any electric checks I could do on some of the components ?

Any clue, proposal, hints from you ?

Thanks a lot for your help. The pi zero is very important for my entire module.

Without more information about what's happening during the boot cycle or visibility of any error messages its impossible to say, other then to state the obvious that its not connecting to the wifi network, will will also need a way to access the pi Ie screen and keyboard before you can attempt to analyse the problem.

[jbudd]

After imaging my SD card with Win32Diskimager as a back-up procedure

Is it possible that you overwrote the SD card rather than reading it?
You could test that by putting wpa_supplicant.conf and ssh.txt in the boot folder, see if you can connect then.

[pcmanbob]

After imaging my SD card with Win32Diskimager as a back-up procedure

Is it possible that you overwrote the SD card rather than reading it?
You could test that by putting wpa_supplicant.conf and ssh.txt in the boot folder, see if you can connect then.

probably not as OP states

5. I used a brand new Pi Zero and both SD cards were functional and I could connect through SSH with both cards, same power plug, same network, same PC.

[B.Goode]

Hi,
I have the same error message but my first troubleshooting points more towards an HW issue rather than SW :
( ... )

Is there any electric checks I could do on some of the components ?

Any clue, proposal, hints from you ?

There is specific advice about checking for the possibility of a 'dead' RPiZero here - https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/view ... 51#p850218

The pi zero is very important for my entire module.

Replacing it might be a sound investment if your course results depend on it?

[Boibelo]

Hi Pcmanbob,

thanks for your answer, indeed I'll get a hdmi cable to look at the screen during the boot and I'll comment further.

Hi B. Goode,

thanks for the link which I checked. Indeed the pi zero w was detected by my win7 laptop and the device manager tried to install drivers for BCM2708. So I guess my pi zero is not dead.
The goal is primarily to understand the issue because I am going to play a lot with this device and I don't want to get into such bugs down the road, whatever the price it is. Time is the issue

I'll keep you posted as soon as I found out more.
BR.

[Boibelo]

Hi,

I just received my mini HDMI and plugged in my defective Pi Zero W : I got the boot sequence stating that a lot of stuff has started, including SSH capability "if SSH file is found on /boot".It was for instance able to mount the boot, raise network interfaces.
In the msg list, it is mentioned "Starting dhcpcd on all interfaces..." but getting the "Started" message took more than 50sec.
Finally, it stops at the "raspberrypi login:" prompt which I am unable to access because I don't have the correct adapter to plug anything on the micro-USB.
Is there anyway to get control of the Pi zero thru the USB port of my Win 7 laptop ?

Thanks for your help,
B.

[Boibelo]

Hi All,

I finally got my adapter to get acces to the command line on my pi zero directly.
I can login. When I do ifconfig, I get the strange results showing wlan0 as an ethernet connection.
At login, I got the message to change my password because ssh is enabled.
the "/etc/network/interface" has no entry more than the "source-drectory /etc/network/interfaces.d
I configured the Wifi either by changing wpa_supplicant.conf or by raspi-config interface. A reboot did not change anything
rfkill show unblocked status for hci0 and wlan0.

I really don't known where else to find a solution. Any idea ?

Thanks,
B

[pcmanbob]

Can you post the results of ifconfig, want to see how the WiFi is reporting as eth0, don't really understand how this would be possible.

[Boibelo]

Sure :

ifconfig
lo: flags=73<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING> mtu 65536
inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 255.0.0.0
inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128 scopeid 0x10<host>
inet6 ma:c_:ad:drs_ prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x20<link>
loop txqueuelen 1000 (Local loopback)
RX packets 0 bytes 0 (0.0 B)
RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0
TX packets 0 bytes 0 (0.0 B)
TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0

wlan0: flags=4099<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
ether b8:27:ma:c_:ad:dress txqueuelen 1000 (Ethernet)
RX packets 0 bytes 0 (0.0 B)
RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0
TX packets 0 bytes 0 (0.0 B)
TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0

[Boibelo]

Also :
"hostname -I" does not return anything.
"iwlist wlan0 scan ¦ grep ESSID" does not return anything
"rfkill" shows unblocked wireless devices (BT and Wifi)
"iw dev wlan0 link" returns "Not connected".
"iw event" returns a bunch of frequencies and the name of my ESSID which is stated into wpa_supplicant.conf
"route -n" returns :
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
127.0.0.1 0.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 U 201 0 0 lo

[pcmanbob]

Well your results from ifconfig look normal to me, as you can see from this example form my pi zero,

Code: Select all

lo: flags=73<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING>  mtu 65536
        inet 127.0.0.1  netmask 255.0.0.0
        inet6 ::1  prefixlen 128  scopeid 0x10<host>
        loop  txqueuelen 1000  (Local Loopback)
        RX packets 0  bytes 0 (0.0 B)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 0  bytes 0 (0.0 B)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

wlan0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        inet 192.168.1.158  netmask 255.255.255.0  broadcast 192.168.1.255
        inet6 fe80::abad:f73b:4e04:ce3d  prefixlen 64  scopeid 0x20<link>
        ether b8:27:eb:58:7e:0f  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)
        RX packets 76858  bytes 10176062 (9.7 MiB)
        RX errors 0  dropped 130  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 14651  bytes 1636330 (1.5 MiB)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0
        
       

and I guess your wifi is still working on the pi zero in as much as its being detected and reported in ifconfig, you wont get a IP returned from "hostname -I" as you are not connected to any network.

Are you sure your wpa_supplicant.conf file is correct and has no hidden characters.

for ref this is mine, I would try editing your wpa_supplicant.conf on the pi directly using nano and check there are no unexpected characters , I have found replacing all the spaces can help eliminated hidden characters.

Code: Select all

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

network={
	ssid="an ssid"
	psk="A password"
	key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
}

What does " iwlist wlan0 scan " ( note no grep ) return ?

[Boibelo]

Hi All,

I finally got the root cause of my issue :

"iw dev wlan0 scan" does not function in a systematic way. It does not detect Wifi networks steadily
"lsmod | grep brcmfmac" returns correctly, showing that the driver is functional
"iw event" shows that frequency scanning is working correctly
"iw dev" shows that wlan0 is also functional

The issue comes from the hardware : 2 resistors very close to the wifi built-in antenna are damaged. It could probably come from a bad manual handling of the pi zero W, known the previous history explained in previous replies.

I hope this won't happen to all of you.

With kind regards,
B.