Raspberry Pi Zero W: Can't connect to SSH no matter what

Question

This is a very long story, so I will try to keep it as short as possible.

1. I got RPi 0 W.

2. I installed Raspbian Stretch Lite, the one straight from official site.

3. I realized that mini HDMI converter hasn't arrived yet, so I decided to go headless. This is going to be a server, after all.

4. Here's where the trouble began -- no matter what I do, I couldn't get the RPi0 to connect to Wi-Fi.

5. So I tried network interface thing (involving those two lines: dtoverlay=dwc2 on config.txt and modules-load=dwc2,g_ether on cmdline.txt, following guide from https://gist.github.com/gbaman/975e2db164b3ca2b51ae11e45e8fd40a )

6. Installed Bonjour Print Service as instructed

7. When it worked, it did show up as network device under the name Network Gadget with some more words in front of it, and it required installation of generic driver from Microsoft Corporation

8. I could ping to raspberrypi.local, but no matter what I try, it always ended up with "Connection refused" error when trying to connect to port 22 when ssh-ing.

9. Now it doesn't work at all, the device never shows up but the ACT LED is still on and flashes away as boot process continues (each tries were done after waiting longer than 90 seconds to ensure boot process is done)

Here's the content of each config files, including "wpa_supplicant.conf" file.

config.txt

<snip, content identical to stock file>

dtoverlay=dwc2

cmdline.txt:

dwc_otg.lpm_enable=0 console=serial0,115200 console=tty1 root=PARTUUID=37665771-02 rootfstype=ext4 elevator=deadline fsck.repair=yes rootwait modules-load=dwc2,g_ether

wpa_supplicant.conf:

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

update_config=1

network={

ssid="********"

psk="********"

scan_ssid=1

key_mgmt=WPA-PSK

}

I do have "ssh" file without extension and content in the drive called root, along with config.txt and cmdline.txt as they told me to do. They were there before first boot.

What went wrong here? Please help!

Robert Peter Oakes · Answer

Are you using a no name sd card by any chance this could cause all these issues and more I have done this numerous times with the pi zero and never had these issues. The only issue I had was with stretch and when I put the card into a pi 3 it worked just fine

Robert Peter Oakes · Answer

The boot folder is the one that windows will see when you put the SD card into a windows machine, yes you will also get some windows errors because of the other partitions on the SD card, dont follow the windows advice and format them, that would be bad. Just navigate into the boot folder using windows explorer or something, then create the files there My /boot/wpa_supplicant.conf contains only this (This is from perspactive of the windows view, not under linux, the content is the same, just the location will change under linux network={ ssid="********" psk="********" key_mgmt=WPA-PSK } create an empty file in the /boot/ folder called nothing but "ssh" without the quotes of course, this will instruct linux to enable ssh at startup these are the only two files I found I needed to add before booting, but as I said earlier, this did not work for Stretch, just pixel or earlier note when you boot up, the filwpa... is moved to /etc/wpa_supplicant folder under linx and will dissapear from the boot folder. the ssh named file will just dissapear once ssh is turned on that's all there is to it. ewhy were you adding the other files ??

Robert Peter Oakes · Answer

I think you may find the instructions should tell you to put these files "ssh", "config.txt" and cmdline.txt" into the /boot/... folder, not the root. I have just done this with my PI Zero W and it worked ok with a few exceptions If I tried to pre-setup the WIFI with wps-supplicant file in /boot/... it will not work with stretch, I tried Jessie and it worked first time

Robert Peter Oakes · Answer

Also those instructions on github are for a pi zero, not a pi zero W and is attempting to get the PI to connect via the USB port by having it pretend it is an ethernet port. you dont need to do that with the PI Zero W, just do what I suggested with Raspian, not Stretch and it should work