wired network / ethernet setup for newbies

[richbass]

I’m posting this as a complete QLC+ and RPi newbie who struggled with getting web access to work because my ethernet port wasn’t configured.

From help on here, plus scouring the net, I finally got it working. Thought I’d share here to help others.

The main problem / reason was the the ethernet port on a fresh install isn’t setup with the details for your local network (LAN).


For anyone reading that has had the same problem, the solution was to edit dhcpcd.conf

I tried editing at the command line (or whatever the correct term is) using
sudo nano /etc/dhcpcd.conf

try it, but that method didn’t work for me, so I put my QLC+ sd card in a usb adaptor, started my pi with another image, navigated to the file and opened with a graphical editor.

The file was blank, and I added the following lines:

interface eth0
static ip_address=192.168.1.251/24
static routers=192.168.1.254
static domain_name_servers=192.168.1.254

This will fix the IP address of your pi to be the same everytime. This may or may not be suitable for you, but maybe it’s a starting point.


I set my pi ip address to 192.168.1.251 because that is a free port for my network. you set what works for you, but you must include /24 at the end

my router has ip address 192.168.1.254. Look at your router to see what address you should use

I took a guess that for me the domain name server had the same ip address, and it seems to have worked. if you don’t know the address try the same


I found a cool app for my iphone to help me figure out the ip addresses. It’s called Fing and shows you all addresses used on your current network. For some reason it doesn’t show the name for each device though (my raspberry pi was shown as generic), so it may be trial and error and common sense to figure out which device is which. You can also login to the setup page for your router; my router has the instructions for doing this on the back of the router itself.

other interesting point that threw me, is that the leds on the ethernet port don’t seem to work as normal ethernet port lights. for me only the orange led was flashing. apparently the orange led is for one speed of connection, and the green for another. don’t know how true this is

Hopefully this’ll help other newbies