May 31 2018 Troubleshooting Raspberry Pi Headless Wifi Config

There are several models of Raspberry Pi with built-in wireless support. They can be configured to connect to a wireless network before powering on, by creating a file named wpa_supplicant.conf in the boot partition of your SD card.

If you have your card properly configured, but the Pi won't connect, make sure you have UNIX-style \n line endings and not windows-style \r\n endings in wpa_supplicant.conf.

This is what the file should look like:

country=us
update_config=1
ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant

network={
 scan_ssid=1
 ssid="My Network Name"
 psk="your password"
}

Make sure you have the right line endings, place that file in the boot partition, and you're good to go.