Raspberry Pi

Summary

This section deals with gotchas. Whenever you find yourself stuck, go here and see if somebody else has already found a solution to your problem. This is the troubleshooting page for handling known issues.

You cannot SSH to a new Raspbian Image

As of the November 2016 release, Raspbian has the SSH server disabled by default. You will have to enable it manually in raspi-config in the terminal. To do this, type

sudo raspi-config

and enable the SSH feature.

If you are handling the Pi headless, i.e. don't have a screen and keyboard attached, you can enable SSH by placing a file named 'ssh', without any extension, onto the boot partition of the SD card.

Cannot find IP address

You need to quickly find your IP address on the PI. Everybody says 'just run ifconfig' but you get a 'command not found'. The reason is ifconfig is not on the path. Just run the following:

/sbin/ifconfig

And you're done.

When deploying MkDocs to Azure, search stops working

The search feature is not broken on mkdocs, but on the Azure site: basically Azure (rightly) blocks static files and some others. The solution is outlined here, but doesn't work anyway, as mkdocs had more static files blocked.

Here is the solution to our problem: on any mkdocs site, you need to add (when deploying to Azure Web Apps) a web.config file with the following mime types enabled:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<configuration>
    <system.webServer>
        <staticContent>
            <mimeMap fileExtension=".json" mimeType="application/json" />
            <mimeMap fileExtension=".woff" mimeType="application/x-woff" />
            <mimeMap fileExtension=".mustache" mimeType="text/html" />
     </staticContent>
    </system.webServer>
</configuration>

The listing above shows a full web.config. If you have one already, don't overwrite: instead extend the staticContent section.

And you're done

XRDP remote desktop not working

It is possible you have installed XRDP on your Pi, but remote connections fail ('wrong password' or similar errors). There is a simple procedure to make things right. The reason is simple, the order of installation was incorrect or you have one too many components installed.

To fix,

  • remove the following packages : xrdp, vnc4server, tightvncserver
sudo apt remove xrdp vnc4server tightvncserver
  • install tightvncserver followed by xrdp
sudo apt install tightvncserver

and

sudo apt install xrdp

You're back in business!

Your clock shows the wrong time

Whether in headless mode, or in the desktop, your clock is wrong. This recipe allows you to setup your time correctly, regardless of mode. Just fire-up the bash, and follow the instructions below:

  • Run the configuration utility
sudo raspi-config
  • Select Internationalisation Options
  • Select option I2 - Change Timezone
  • Select your Geographical Area
  • Select your nearest City
  • Select Finish

Links