Is it currently possible to set up a { Raspberry Pi } as a [ Wifi hotspot ] in ( headless mode ) *without* installing new software? - ssh

I have what I believe to be a very simple question.
Context
I have a Raspberry Pi Zero W running Raspbian Lite (2020-02-13-raspbian-buster-lite.img).
Question
How do I change just one file on the SD Card, e.g. in the host partition, to auto-configure the raspberrypi as a wifi hostpot, and call it raspberrypi.
Also, I would like to be able to set the hotspot to be open, or with a password raspberry (just like the ssh password :) ).
What I tried already
I found lots of instructions on installing software packages, but unless I'm connecting via ssh already, then I can't run commands unless I'm already networked to the pi.
Why do I want this?
I want to be able to do this, for much greater ease of connecting to a raspberrypi in the first instance, for example, along with enabling ssh, this would allow very simple ease of access for incoming connections.
Only an idea
Finally, what does anyone think of the idea of enabling this by default in Raspbian. It can be disabled is required, but would substantially ease the process of connecting to a Pi with a Raspbian image out of the box - allowing a use to see so-called "proof-of-pi" immediately after first boot.

As far as I've seen, configuring the Pi before-first-boot by editing the boot partition files is limited. However there are some custom tools out there where you can look at creating a custom image or design some provisioning steps for your Pi.
PiBakery is a tool for creating custom images of Raspbian. Setting up a WiFi hotspot will most certainly require a custom script for tool installation and configuration.
I know that you can configure a SD card to auto-connect to WiFi (for normal network connections) by creating a wpa_supplicant.conf file and setting some values in boot's config.txt, you may want to check some of the documentation from the Raspbian project regarding config.txt. Keep in mind that the default raspberrypi.org image is slightly different than the Raspbian Project's image, so your mileage may vary.
Finally, depending on your use case for this/deployment strategy, you can also look into changing the Pi's boot mode so that it boots from a network host, kind of like "PXE Boot" for Windows machines. You'd have to host a provisioning server that the Pi can get information from and sync up with, which may be out of the bounds of what you're trying to accomplish, but I figured I'd bring it up!

Related

Is it possible to have different dev VM environments and access graphics card?

What I want to do on my laptop:
Develop and Run on windows with Visual Studio (CUDA, TensorRT,...)
Develop and Run on Linux (CUDA, TensorRT,...)
Environment to edit videos, photoshop,...
Play games
Environment for general use (web browser, outlook, word,...)
Environment to test applications
Possibly connecting some external GPU to offload the work (cuda,...) from my laptop's graphics card. Since I'm new to this, I haven't researched enough to understand how it can be done. But, this is in my plans.
What I did and reaserched:
As a start, I created VM environements in my host Windows OS using VirtualBox for #1 and #2, but I cannot run inside VM, since it doesn't provide access to graphics card. Even if it did, I still need somehow to switch to a different environment when I want to play games for example.
I probably need hypervisor type 1 if I want to have environment to play games? But, in this case I'll need a second laptop to access it, right?
Is this even possible to do on one laptop (I have strong laptop with enough RAM and SSD)
Graphics cards (GPU) are PCI devices, so they can be passed to VMs with PCI Passthrough. A device is not accessible to the host during passthrough. Hot plug can be used to reattach a graphics card to a different VM or the host without rebooting.
I don't know if a Windows host supports GPU passthrough (maybe you need Windows Server), but Linux host and Windows guest seems to work.
Setting this up is easier if you have a second GPU that remains attached to the host or another computer to control the host during GPU passthrough, for example via SSH.

Trouble setting up Raknet Server on Raspberry Pi

I have been trying to get Raknet up and running on my Raspberry Pi (2).
I am using a simple client server test program to connect from my windows machine to my raspberry pi. Using tshark on the Pi I can see that all message are arriving on the Pi. However, the server application does not seem to pick those up. As far as I can deduce all ports are open, the machines are on the same network, the code is correct (taken from some github repo with examples for raknet).
The frustrating thing is that a while back I though I solved this communication by starting my server app as root (sudo). However, in the meantime something has been changed in my setup which makes this no longer the case. Any help is appreciated.
I completely forgot about my question here. It actually had to do with privileges on the networks we use here. I had been testing on two different networks without realizing. Problem has been solved.

Using saltstack ssh

Is there a difference between using salt-proxy ssh and directly salt-ssh? I'm interested because according to documentation both aimed to run remote commands without agent installation on the end machine.
You cant simply do salt-ssh on a proxy minion, for which you would have to write your own custom ssh interface to the remote system, because your proxy minion may not support doing salt-ssh.
How to choose between using salt-ssh vs salt-proxy totally depends on the type of a minion system.
As stated in the saltstack documentation - https://docs.saltstack.com/en/latest/topics/ssh/index.html and
https://docs.saltstack.com/en/latest/topics/proxyminion/index.html
For salt-ssh to be used, the remote system must have python installed - one of the criteria. For example, controlling ubuntu from centos.
As stated in the salt-proxy doc,
Proxy minions are a developing Salt feature that enables controlling
devices that, for whatever reason, cannot run a standard salt-minion.
Examples include network gear that has an API but runs a proprietary
OS, devices with limited CPU or memory, or devices that could run a
minion, but for security reasons, will not.

Change VNC boot configuration in Raspbian Jessie

When I boot my Pi 3 connected to a monitor, the built-in VNC server loads with the monitor's resolution. When I boot the Pi 3 without a monitor connected, it defaults to a much lower resolution.
I've found this lower resolution extremely difficult to code on as I can't see very much of my code at once.
Is there any way to set a configuration file and specify the resolution the VNC server launches at?
Found after more digging:
The boot configuration in Raspbian (I'm using Jessie) needed to be modified.
To do this I ran sudo nano /boot/config.txt in terminal to open the file as superuser in nano.
I changed (un-commented) the following lines:
hdmi_force_hotplug=1
hdmi_group=1
hdmi_mode=16
mode=16 is standard 1080p IIRC
Modes can be found here: Raspberry Pi Configuration
From what I understand, what we're doing is forcing the Pi to boot as if a monitor were connected, then specifying the resolution.

Raspberry Pi2 IoT no HDMI output

I have had Win 10 IoT Core running on a Raspberry Pi2, it was working fine, I had ported across my signage software, and all good, then the hdmi port stopped working ? my monitor just says no output, and goes into sleep mode. the Pi is running as I can assess it via the web portal, I can still deploy my application to it, and it says its running, but nothing been displayed.
I know that when using Linux there is a config file that you can modify, but what do you do with windows version ?
you have the configuration file for Windows too. check in the root of SD card. refer https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=5851. You can try setting (this forces the board to use DVI mode instead of HDMI)
hdmi_group=2 # forces DVI timing to be used
It might also be due to low power input to the RP2, which could cause HTMI to not work. Try using USB3 or 1.5A~2.0A/ 5V adapter.
Ensure that you are running headed mode and not switched to headless by mistake. Details here: https://ms-iot.github.io/content/en-US/win10/HeadlessMode.htm
he display.