Setting up Raspberry Pi, wifi, static IP

Goal

Set up headless RPi, Wifi with static IP.

Environment

• Windows 10 64bit
• Raspberry Pi 1A, 1B, 3B, Zero
• External monitor, powered USB hub, wifi dongle, keyboard/mouse.
• RPi OS; Raspibian Jessie Lite 

Although I will be using RPi headless, the easiest way to set up is hook up external monitor, powered USB hub, connect keyboard mouse + wifi module.  I tried different headless set up, but they all were too inconvenient, especially with RPi models with only one USB port.

Install/Setup Raspberry Pi on SD

1. Raspberry Pi OS download: https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/
2. I got the easy one, Raspbian Jessie Lite, https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/
3. Use Win32 Disk Image to write the OS onto SD card https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/ 

Setting up RPi

1. Insert the SD card and boot it up.
2. Log in: ID=pi, password= raspberry  
• Do NOT change the password yet!
3. sudo raspi-config
4. configure/enable desired features:
• hostname
• interfacing option
• overclock
• adavnced options: memory split - 16 is the minimum. Any lower number will set it to default value.
• localisation (select appropriate selections for your location)
• Change Locale: uncheck everything, and check en_US.UTF-8
• Change Timezone: America > New_York
• Change wi-fi Country Set... : select US
5. sudo vi /etc/default/keyboard 
• change to: XKBLAYOUT="us"
6. sudo reboot
7. After reboot, test your keyboard typing special characters, such as !@#$%^ ... etc.
8. If it works fine, then change password, typing "passwd"
• This step is the last, because if you use special characters in password, the keyboard works properly after localization/keyboard layout change.

Setting up wifi

$ sudo vi /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

and edit as follow -- change BOLD strings for your wifi:

country=US

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

update_config=1

network={

    ssid="## YOUR SSID ##"

    psk="## YOUR WIFI PASSWORD ##"

}

Static IP

$ sudo vi /etc/network/interfaces

and set up as below -- chage BOLD strings to your needs:

auto lo

iface lo inet loopback

iface eth0 inet static

        address 192.168.1.100

        netmask 255.255.255.0

        network 192.168.1.0

        broadcast 192.168.1.255

        gateway 192.168.1.1

        dns-nameservers 192.168.1.1

allow-hotplug wlan0

iface wlan0 inet static

        wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

        address 192.168.1.101

        netmask 255.255.255.0

        network 192.168.1.0

        broadcast 192.168.1.255

        gateway 192.168.1.1

        dns-nameservers 192.168.1.1

allow-hotplug wlan1

iface wlan1 inet manual

        wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

Don't forget to disable DHCPCD:

$ sudo systemctl disable dhcpcd

Reboot and check your static IP

$ sudo reboot

...after reboot and check...

$ ip addr

Update and Install Software

Update, upgrade:

$ sudo apt-get update

$ sudo apt-get upgrade

$ sudo reboot

Install Software:

$ sudo apt-get install mc tree screen python figlet dnsutils python-setuptools python-pip

Note: for web server, I prefer Apache for normal servers H/W, but for RPi, it's better to use Nginx as its memory usage is a lot lower.