It is still possible to get a Raspberry Pi on Wifi, even the first time it’s ever booted, just by adding a little text to the end of one file. That was a little unclear at one point yesterday, but it turns out that I was dealing with corrupted files from the “dd” utility… that seems to be getting more frequent, I need to do something about it.
In any case, the file (as before) is wpa_supplicant.conf in /etc/wpa_supplicant. The addition looks like this:
__________________
network={
ssid=”Network_Wombat”
psk=”Passphrase set up on router.”
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
}
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Obviously, you need to substitute your own SSID, passphrase and security protocol.
This means that you can still edit just one file on the SD card, or even in the image file (though you may need to mount it) and have the RPi automatically connect to your network via Wifi on first boot, which helps a lot in setting up a headless system.
If you have some unusual settings on your Wifi router you may have to explore other parameters, but once you have it working you can just keep a copy of the text handy to cut-and-paste into every Raspberry Pi you work on that you’ll want to connect to your network.
Once the first boot is completed, the Raspberry Pi should show up on your wireless router
Note, however, that you will have to make another change in order to use SSH on first boot!
– Robert the Wombat