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berryboot:headless_installation

Headless installation

Normal wired network headless installation

If you would like to use Berryboot without having a display attached, open the file named cmdline.txt located on the SD card in a text editor, and append the following settings to the same line as the other options:

vncinstall ipv4=192.168.88.88/255.255.255.0/192.168.88.1 

The network information is in IP/netmask/gateway format.
You can then start a VNC client program on your normal computer, and connect to the IP-address you specified.

Wireless headless installation

To start a headless installation using wifi, append to cmdline.txt on the same line as the existing options:

vncinstall ipv4=192.168.88.88/255.255.255.0/192.168.88.1/wlan0

And create a file called wpa_supplicant.conf on the FAT partition of the SD card with the wifi SSID and password in the following format:

ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
ap_scan=1


network={
    ssid="ssid-of-accesspoint"
    psk="wpa-password"
}

Known issues

The VNC client you are using must request 24-bit color (*not* 256 colors palleted mode). TightVNC and krdc work fine by default, for RealVNC make sure you enable FullColour in the settings:

Using a VNC client that requests the wrong amount of colors, will crash the application (displaying an “emergency recovery shell” on screen).

See also

berryboot/headless_installation.txt · Last modified: 2014/08/09 15:59 by max