Setting up a Raspberry Pi for OSX using a direct ethernet connection

The Raspberry Pi is a great piece of hardware. However you don't always want to hook it up to some screen and keyboard when working with it. I in fact never did since I like to do everything using SSH which is enable out of the box if you are using the raspbian distribution. So just hook it up to your router and start hacking. But what if you have no router and only you Mac?
The Raspberry Pi is configured by default to receive an IP address from a DHCP server. So you need a DHCP server.

This can be done using the sharing option in OSX. Just set it up like that, ignore the warning about your ISP, since you are not connecting to anything but you Raspberry Pi. You can also share your wifi-connection if you are at home but if you have secure enterprise wifi this option doesn't work. Once you have enabled this option just connect your mac and Raspberry Pi using an ethernet cable and THEN connect the power to the Pi.

Also note that you don't need a cross-over cable, any normal ethernet cable will do. If it doesn't work at once try disconnecting the power from the Raspberry Pi. Now you can login using ssh to the Raspberry Pi at 192.168.2.2. Happy hacking!



Comments

Ben Quan said…
Thanks for the tip! I tried it and it actually works.. Well sort of... :) I can SSH, but once inside the Raspberry PI, I cannot access internet. i tried a simple ping www.google.com and get ping: unknown host www.google.com

What could be wrong?

Also where did that IP (192.168.2.2) come from? I thought it would be a random dinamic IP.
Alex said…
This way you only make a connection between you mac and the raspberry pi, internet won't work from the pi. However you can try to share it to the Wifi instead, but then the Pi will get an IP address from the Wifi.

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