Pimoroni Pi4 SBC - enable SSH ?

[PaulBC]

Hi All,


We have been using the Raspberry Pi 4 units sold by Pimoroni which come with a pre-loaded debian install as SBC units for 3CX - they work very well.

One problem we found is that SSH is not enabled on these, and attempting to enable via Raspi-config doesn't work..

on boot you can see that the SSH service attempts to start but then fails.

Can anyone advise how to get SSH working on these configs so that we can remotely access them / work on them headless ?

 

[JohnS_3CX]

Hi Paul,

Is this just a single unit we are talking about or did you get a big batch where all behave the same?

If its a single unit then just wipe the SD and start from scratch
https://www.3cx.com/docs/installing-pbx-raspberry-pi/

Otherwise we would like to hear more if you got a batch that was not behaving as expected.

 

[PaulBC]

Hi John, thanks for the reply

We've had 5 of these so far and they are all the same - we have another 2 I think arriving today. I guess if you boot one up off your shelf you should see the same red message in the boot list advising that SSH can't / doesn't start

 

[PaulBC]

Hi John,

Have tried your units with the link you provided an all works - looks like perhaps there's something not right with the images that are being shipped, unless there is a step we need to take to resolve on them ?

 

[JohnS_3CX]

If you don't mind try this as a test on of the shipped SD cards and let me know if it works:

1. Plug SD into a Windows PC
2. If you get any prompts about formatting the SD, cancel and ignore them
3. Look in My Computer for a drive labeled as "boot"
4. Open that drive and it should contain a bunch of files
5. See if there is a file simply called "ssh" with no extension, and if it does not exist then create a blank file just called ssh and it must not have any extension (ie. .TXT or anything)
6. Put the SD back into the Pi and boot it up, and see if SSH is now enabled.

If not, then try to grab a snapshot of the error if possible

 

[PaulBC]

Hi John,

yep, we did that yesterday on a couple - no joy. Also activating SSH via raspi-config on your images seems to come back with a "SSH is " message (ie blank text where it should say "enabled") - repeated this on 2 units yesterday, will try again with the 2 that arrive today and try and take a photo of the screen if it helps you out ?

 

[JohnS_3CX]

Ok Paul, for now just follow our guide as if the SD is blank out of the box and we will take a further look at what is being shipped.