If you are trying to setup your Raspberry Pi ( Running Raspbian ) without a monitor, you might be in for a surprise. Well, the new Raspbian versions do not have SSH enabled by default, and for good reason. Most people who setup a RaspberryPi do not even change the default password and they connect it to the internet. And these RaspberryPis become part of a botnet in no time.

Anyways, let’s see how to enable SSH.

Enable SSH in Raspbian Link to heading

  1. Prepare the SD card with Raspbian

  2. Connect the SD card to your Linux/Mac/Windows laptop

  3. Open the /boot partition of the SD card. This is a FAT filesystem, so all major operating systems should be able to open it.

  4. cd to the /boot partition of the SD card (not the /boot of your system, obviously) and create an empty file named ssh

    On a Mac/Linux machine Link to heading

    touch ssh

    On a Windows Laptop Link to heading

    Use notepad to create the empty file. Make sure it doesn’t have the .txt extension

And that’s it. Boot the Pi and you should be able to ssh to the Pi with the default username and password