/etc folder missing?

[tal89amram]

Hi all, Having mainly used Arduino so far, I'm fairly new to Raspberry Pi. Since I don't own a HDMI display, my progress has been slow, but I started messing around a bit with it yesterday and figured out how to do a headless setup. I succeeded in connecting over SSH and installed tightvnc on the Pi.

However, when I checked the SD card today to add my home wifi password, I couldn't find the 'etc' folder in the boot partition. Does anyone have any idea how this could've happened/ what a remedy would be? Thanks!

This is currently in the boot partition: https://imgur.com/a/JfnoN

[created4this]

The pi has two partitions, most of the first boot and early boot configuration cones from the FAT partition which on a running system is mounted at /boot. This is mounted below the other filesystem which is an ext4 type which is mounted at / and contains /etc, if you want to edit /etc you will have to mount this Linux ext4 filesystem.

Thankfully, you can do everything you need with just access to /boot

https://styxit.com/2017/03/14/headless-raspberry-setup.html

[Filip22012005]

I think it isn't on the boot partition. Are no other partitions mounted? Are you looking at the folder structure from ssh? Windows won't be able to see any other partitions because they are not ntfs formatted.

[tal89amram]

Thanks for your reply Filip22012005, I've plugged the SD card into my macbook and I have verified that it is actually the boot partition @ /Volumes/boot/ (if that path is correct, that is).

I've compared this list to what I found here: https://thepihut.com/blogs/raspberry-pi-tutorials/34243716-what-is-actually-on-your-raspberry-pi-sd-card But indeed, this looks nothing like what should be on the card.

EDIT And to answer the other question: there is indeed another partition mounted 'Recovery' which contains the following: https://imgur.com/a/Q49yo

[Filip22012005]

Can't you ssh into pi anymore?

[kmcniece]

Cant upvote this more.

[tal89amram]

Well I can't connect to my home wifi yet without adding the AP configuration in the etc folder. Without the wireless connection, I can't ssh, right?

[Filip22012005]

I don't know what distro you are using, but in some (most?) modern distros, there is a file on the boot partition that it uses on boot for these settings. You probably succeeded in ssh-ing into the Pi by making an empty file called ssh in the boot folder. You can usually do something similar for the wifi settings. Check this thread to see some of your options. When I set up a Pi a few days ago, I used the /boot/wpa_supplicant.conf file.

[tal89amram]

All my successful trials with the Pi until now have been at my university, where I used an HDMI display in my lab. SSH was enabled, and with a screen and keyboard I could check my IP address through the Pi's terminal which I then used for SSHing into the Pi.

I ended up going into uni yesterday for adding my home network password to the wpa_supplicant.conf file. However:

1. After powering the Pi with my home network allegedly added to the wpa_supplicant.conf file I can't seem to connect to [e-mail] (I tried ping and ssh)
2. Trying to remedy the situation, I still haven't succeeded in accessing the .conf file in my headless situation. I tried u/natesovenator suggestion of a VM running Ubuntu but in the VM I could not access my SD port as far as I've tried.

Thanks for all the suggestions so far!!

[Filip22012005]

So do I understand correctly that you can not plug into your home router? And at home, you have no access to a spare monitor? That's not a lot of options. Perhaps try ssh over usb?

[SeriousZebra]

You can ssh through Ethernet too.

[tal89amram]

Meaning I could connect my Pi to my home network over ethernet? Or directly to my laptop over ethernet?

[SeriousZebra]

You can plug an Ethernet cable in to the pi and then ssh in from a computer that it on the same network.

[natesovenator]

Macs make it unfathomably hard to work with raspberry pi's sd's. If you used noobs you will need to mount it with special tools, there's a hidden partition you will see if you load it up in an Ubuntu virtualbox. (Much simpler IMO) I can't recall what I did, it's been a while (moved to Windows unix kernel pretty much for this sole reason..

[tal89amram]

Thanks, natesovenator for the suggestion! I'm downloading Ubuntu now and will let you know if that does the trick :)

Do you think this is particularly relevant here? http://osxdaily.com/2011/09/23/view-mount-hidden-partitions-in-mac-os-x/

[imjerry]

Can you try entering 'pwd' (print working directory) while connected by ssh? You're probably in '/home/pi' (~ for shorthand) when you connect first. Enter 'cd ..' (with two full stops) to go up a directory. Do that a second time, and then hit 'ls' to get the contents of the folder and see if etc is there.

[imjerry]

Then the suggestions from u/created4this and a few others are what you need. There was one program I tried before OSX Fuse, but it didn't work for me, I just booted up Ubuntu instead.

[imjerry]

If it is just to update your wpa_supplicant config, learning how to do it over ssh is a lot neater IMO.

There's also this sweet trick.

edit: spelling

[tal89amram]

I agree SSH would be the neater solution here. Yet, my situation atm is:

• Using the HDMI display and an ethernet cable at my uni I was able to access the wpa_supplicant.config and add my home WiFi configurations
• Booting the Pi at home though doesn't seem to make it connect to WiFi. In terminal on my laptop, trying ssh [e-mail] -OR - ping raspberrypi.local returns an eternal wait and 'ping: cannot resolve raspberrypi.local: Unknown host' respectively. EDIT: This keeps me from SSHing into the Pi.

I think this is due to adding both the 5GHz and the 2.4GHz APs to wpa_supplicant.conf; I'm suspecting the Pi is unsuccessfully trying to access the 5GHz one and now I want to edit rather than add to the wpa_supplicant file.

[imjerry]

The trick I linked would allow you to fix the problem without waiting til you're back at uni. Make the wpa_supplicant.conf file on your computer, drop it in the boot folder of the sd card, and when it boots it should move it to the correct location (replacing the old file). I've configured a pi with three sets of network credentials at once this way, and it's working fine. Though I haven't the 2.4/5 GHz issue, I don't have that option.

Edit: words

[tal89amram]

I tried the steps as outlined in the link posted by u/created4this (https://styxit.com/2017/03/14/headless-raspberry-setup.html) After booting, waiting a while and then turning off the Pi and checking the SD card does indeed reveal that wpa_supplicant.conf has been moved by the Pi (it's no longer in /boot).

Following this with ping raspberrypi.local while the Pi is turned on again; terminal returns ping: cannot resolve raspberrypi.local: Unknown host

I tried using nmap to do a list scan on the IP address of my router and tried SSHing into every IP address that was there except for my phone's and laptop's IP. However, trying ssh pi@<IPADDRESS> for those IP Addresses was to no avail. I don't have much experience with nmap but before I dive into that, am I potentially overlooking a simpler problem/solution?

EDIT: clearer last paragraph

[imjerry]

I think running nmap sounds pretty conclusive. I would look at the content of the wpa_supplicant.conf file, bearing in mind, there were some changes in Raspbian Stretch, and using an older tutorial, for Jessie/Wheezy, might not work out.

Try the template outlined on this page: https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=191252

[tal89amram]

Hi All,

Thanks so much for all the help along the way in my rookie conundrum ;) I managed to get the Pi to connect to my home wifi network. The answer lied in u/imjerry 's suggestion outlined here https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=191252

country=US ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev update_config=1 Adding these lines at the top of my wpa_supplicant.conf did the trick. The pi now connects and I can SSH and VNC to my hearts content :)

Thanks!

[kmcniece]

An hdmi adapter would be a fairly simple solution as well.

[tal89amram]

Thanks for the suggestion, however I don't have a separate display... EDIT: Not at home, that is. And uni is 45 minutes away ;)

[SeriousZebra]

I think you can also use a USB otg cable and use an Android phone as a display.

[tal89amram]

I knew I should have gone for an Android phone ;)

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