Pre-setup WiFi connection from Linux

[Hurray_Overdrawn]

I am installing OSMC on a RPi 3 B+, from a Linux (Fedora 31) machine.

Entering WiFi connection setting post-install on the RPi is tedious (or I’m just quite lazy), so I would like to burn the image with network settings preconfigured — so I insert the SD card, fire the RPi, and can directly ssh to it to finish the install.

The wiki says that pre-configuring network can be done using the OSMC installer. However the installer has gone missing for Linux, and burning the image should be done via dd

Question: How to pre-configure WiFi settings when the image is burn from Linux?

[fzinken]

@Hurray_Overdrawn

Question: How to pre-configure WiFi settings when the image is burn from Linux?

OSMC installer fails on macOS Catalina 10.15.2

Ahhh, So to be clear (and to help any others who might stumble across this) - To setup WIFI networking on the SD card when not using the installer Create a file called “preseed.cfg” at the root of the SD card Populate the file with the following information: d-i target/storage string sd d-i network/interface string wlan d-i network/auto boolean true d-i network/ssid string YOUR_SSID d-i network/wlan_keytype string 1 d-i network/wlan_key string YOUR_PSK Where YOUR_SSID and YOUR_P…

[Hurray_Overdrawn]

Thank you!

For the record (and because the accepted answer in the link can be misleading) here is what I did (and was successful):

• Create a preseed.cfg file as follows (and replace YOUR_WIFI_NAME and YOUR_WIFI_PWD by your actual SSID and password):

  d-i target/storage string sd
  d-i network/interface string wlan
  d-i network/auto boolean true
  d-i network/ssid string YOUR_WIFI_NAME
  d-i network/wlan_keytype string 1
  d-i network/wlan_key string YOUR_WIFI_PWD
  

• Burn the image with your network connection pre-configured:

  • Insert you SD card, and retrieve its location via lsblk -p.
    (The disk — i.e. SD card — location should be something like sdb, or sdc, not followed by a digit. Then replace sdX with this value in the script below.)

  • Run the following commands (as root):

    # Burn the image on SD card (use the relevant path after `if=`)
    dd bs=1M if=OSMC_TGT_rbp2_20200402.img of=/dev/sdX conv=fsync
    
    # Mount SD card
    mkdir /mnt/osmc
    mount /dev/sdX1 /mnt/osmc
    
    # Copy config
    cp preseed.cfg /mnt/osmc
    
    # Unmount partition and clean mounting point
    umount /dev/sdX1
    rm -r /mnt/osmc
    

• Insert the SD card in the RPi, power it up, and… that’s it!

[fzinken]

@Hurray_Overdrawn

Format the SD card.
(You don’t want a random script found on the internet to do that for you.)

That step should be not necessary as the dd will overwrite the whole card

[fzinken]

@Hurray_Overdrawn

(The disk — i.e. SD card — location should be something like sda ,

As sda always is the first disk (normally the one that has your OS) this is quite unlikely the SD Card to be sda unless a very special setup.

[Hurray_Overdrawn]

Thanks for the hint about dd.

(Regarding sda, I’ve listed here because it’s my case as my disk connected via NVMe port, rather than SATA — but I’ll remove it as it can be misleading indeed.)

Anyway, assuming that the preseed.cfg has been created, I’ve created the following script that can be called as follows:

# ./burn_osmc <disk> <path/to/img> <path/to/cfg>

For example:

./burn_osmc sdb ~/downloads/OSMC_TGT_rbp2_20200402.img ~/sandbox/preseed.cfg

---

burn_osmc:

# Retrieve arguments
disk_name=$1
img_path=$2
config_path=${3:-preseed.cfg}

# Burn the image on SD card
dd bs=1M if=$img_path of=/dev/$disk_name conv=fsync

# Mount SD card
mkdir /mnt/osmc
mount /dev/${disk_name}1 /mnt/osmc

# Copy config
cp $config_path /mnt/osmc

# Unmount partition and clean mounting point
umount /dev/${disk_name}1
rm -r /mnt/osmc