Remote access

SSH to the Pi from macOS, Linux, or Windows OpenSSH. Command-line basics for first-timers. Generate and install an ed25519 key for passwordless login.

Your Pi is running somewhere in the corner of the room, with no screen and no keyboard. Time to connect to it from the comfort of your regular computer using SSH, the Secure Shell, and learn just enough command-line to get through the rest of the guide without cursing the terminal.

Find your Pi on the network

Where did your Pi end up on the local network? Give it a minute or two after the first boot, it's expanding the filesystem, generating SSH keys, and settling in.

Open a terminal on your regular computer:

macOS: open Terminal from Applications → Utilities.
Linux: use whichever terminal your distribution ships.
Windows: open Windows Terminal or PowerShell from the Start menu.

Try to reach the Pi by its hostname. Press Ctrl-C to stop:

ping raspibolt.local

You should see replies like 64 bytes from raspibolt.local (192.168.0.20).... That IP address on the right (yours will differ) is where the Pi actually lives on your network.

If ping fails, mDNS (the .local name-discovery magic) isn't working on your network, a common quirk of some routers. The official Raspberry Pi guide shows how to find the IP directly on your router or with nmap. Once you have the IP (say 192.168.0.20), use it wherever this guide says raspibolt.local.

Connect via SSH

SSH is built into every current macOS, Linux, and Windows, no extra client to install. Connect with:

ssh admin@raspibolt.local

The first time you connect, SSH asks you to confirm the Pi's host key fingerprint. Type yes and press Enter. You're now inside the Pi.

Still using PuTTY?

PuTTY is no longer necessary on Windows 10 or 11, the built-in OpenSSH client does everything this guide needs. If you already have a PuTTY setup you love, it still works, but the commands here assume the native ssh.

Working on the command line

You're going to spend a lot of time at this prompt, so a few basics are worth a minute of your life:

Tab completion, press Tab to auto-complete commands, filenames, and paths. Press it twice to see all matches. Once you start using it you'll wonder how you ever lived without it.
Command history, press the up and down arrow keys to cycle through previous commands. No need to retype anything.
Admin privileges with sudo, the admin user can't change system files directly, which is deliberate. Prefix any such command with sudo ("superuser do"), and the Pi asks for your password before running it. Service users like bitcoin (coming later) have no sudo at all, that's intentional too.
Editing files with nano, this guide uses the nano editor. To save: press Ctrl-O, confirm the filename, press Enter. To exit: press Ctrl-X. That's it. (If you already love vim or emacs, use those; nano is just the friendliest default.)
Copy and paste, in most terminals, highlight with the mouse to copy and press Ctrl-Shift-V to paste. On macOS Terminal, use Cmd-C / Cmd-V. In Windows Terminal, right-click to paste at the cursor.

A selective reference of useful Linux commands lives in the FAQ, bookmark it.

Set up an SSH key

Passwords work, but an SSH key pair is better in every way: it's safer (a stolen password is useless without the key file), and it's less typing (no password prompts on every login). This is why the next few minutes of setup pay off every single time you log in. The plan is to set up the key here, then disable password logins entirely in the Security section.

Key pairs sound like a cryptography homework assignment, but the workflow is mechanical: run one command, copy one file. This guide uses Ed25519 keys. They're short, fast, and well supported by every current SSH client and server.

Generate the key pair

On your regular computer (not the Pi), run:

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "raspibolt"

Accept the default file location by pressing Enter, and pick a strong passphrase when prompted. The passphrase protects the key file on disk, you'll type it once per session, and your OS keychain can remember it after that.

Two new files appear in ~/.ssh/ (on Windows: %USERPROFILE%\.ssh\):

id_ed25519, the private key. This stays on your computer and nowhere else. Ever.
id_ed25519.pub, the public key. This is what you hand to the Pi (and any other server you want to reach).

Already have an RSA key?

If you've been using a working id_rsa for years, it still works, RSA 4096-bit keys are fine. Anything smaller than 4096-bit RSA is not. New keys should be Ed25519.

Copy the public key to the Pi

On macOS or Linux, one command does it:

ssh-copy-id admin@raspibolt.local

Enter password [A] one last time. ssh-copy-id appends your public key to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on the Pi, creating the directory and file if needed.

On Windows, ssh-copy-id isn't shipped by default. Run this one-liner in PowerShell instead, it pipes your public key over SSH and sets the right permissions on the Pi:

type $env:USERPROFILE\.ssh\id_ed25519.pub | ssh admin@raspibolt.local "mkdir -p ~/.ssh && chmod 700 ~/.ssh && cat >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys && chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys"

Verify the key works

Open a fresh terminal and connect again:

ssh admin@raspibolt.local

You should be logged in without being asked for password [A], only the passphrase that unlocks your local key file. If that's what happened, the key is working.

Password logins on the Pi are still enabled at this point; you'll turn them off in the next chapter on Security.