First use - headless

mbp

I have a Pi4 and have flashed v15 onto the SDcard.
I am planning to use it headless but I can not find any information about how to configure the OS to allow headless access from the start.
I have tried to connect using SSH and VNC but clearly need to enable these options before I can use them.

Does anyone have knowledge of how to tweak the OS to allow me to go headless form the start?

Thanks

smieschek

@mbp headless itself should work from the start without any additional configuration or changes. The question is how to access the device in headless mode on first boot, if I understand you correctly.

I can see three possibilities with different pros and cons:

you could have the device connected to hdmi or any display for the first boot, configure everything, and afterwards use it headless. For one device it's probably the easiest and fastest way, and my recommendation, if you don't plan to enrol more than 10 devices
you can create a provisioning file: https://hub.emteria.com/dashboard/provisioning
It would need to do automatic setup, and e.g. enable VNC
Export the provisioning file and put it on the boot partition: https://emteria.com/kb/introduction-to-device-provisioning
Some effort to understand provisioning, and if it doesn't work out of the box, you have no feedback why. To debug you would need to connect a display anyway and see if SetupWizard correctly applies your settings or throws some errors.
you can order a custom image with enabled VNC, and all other settings that you require. This only makes sense if you will deploy at least 200-300 devices, as it comes with addition costs to host and maintain your custom image

mbp

Thanks for the feedback. I am looking at all sorts of way to do this. Probably will try and work through the provisioning information and enable vnc. I have to work out if this is really the path that I want to go down, but more of that later.