Raspberry Pi Headless Install In a Nutshell (Mac)

A concise guide for people who don’t need trivial things explained…

Download the latest lite image from here: https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/
Identify the disk number using diskutil list
Unmount the disk using diskutil, eg: diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk4
Clone the image to the SD card, eg: sudo dd bs=1m if=2016-03-18-raspbian-jessie.img of=/dev/rdisk4
Add an empty file ssh to the newly created drive’s boot partition should be visible at /Volumes/boot
Eject the disk, eg: sudo diskutil eject /dev/rdisk3
Add the wireless configuration file wpa_supplicant.conf to the boot volume. (Note: it is also possible to configure this in the linux path /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf). See below for example.
Connect the Pi using an ethernet cable and boot from the new SD card
Find the IP address of the Pi from the DHCP server
Log in to the terminal using SSH (user pi, password raspberry), eg: ssh pi@192.168.0.123
Check which wireless networks are visible: sudo iwlist wlan0 scan | grep ESSID
Edit the wireless config: sudo nano /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
Check if connected: ifconfig wlan0
Set a DHCP reservation for the MAC of the wireless adapter
Restart the adapter (sudo ifdown wlan0 && sudo ifup wlan0) or pi sudo reboot
Run sudo raspi-config, expand the filesystem and set internationalization options

UPDATE:

wpa_supplicant.conf now requires country code, eg:

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

network={
    ssid="MyNetwork"
    scan_ssid=1
    psk="s00perS3cure"
    key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
}

If the Pi can’t be found on the network connect it using the ethernet port. If found that way SSH in to it, then:

Check which wireless networks are visible: sudo iwlist wlan0 scan | grep ESSID
Edit the wireless config: sudo nano /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

network={
    ssid="MyNetwork"
    psk="s00perS3cure"
}

Check if connected: ifconfig wlan0

Once it’s on the network you may want to:

Set a DHCP reservation for the MAC of the wireless adapter
Restart the adapter (sudo ifdown wlan0 && sudo ifup wlan0) or pi sudo reboot
Run sudo raspi-config and expand the filesystem

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