A headless Raspberry Pi has no convenient screen or keyboard, and a cloud VM may be far from your desk. SSH provides a secure remote login so you can use a terminal on either machine. It enables remote command execution; it does not, by itself, bring your code onto the machine. section 11.1.2 section 5.1.1
Before connecting:
- For a Raspberry Pi, enable SSH in Pi Imager’s Services settings. If using password authentication, set a username and a non-default password, and configure Wi-Fi or Ethernet. section 11.1.1
- Find the Pi’s IP address through your router’s device list or, with a monitor and keyboard attached, run `ifconfig` or `ip a` on the Pi and look for `inet`. section 11.1.2
- For a GCP VM, confirm its status is `RUNNING` before connecting. An unattended NVIDIA driver installation can briefly delay SSH access after the VM starts. section 5.1.1
Connect from a terminal
Use `ssh username@0.0.0.0` for the Pi, replacing the example username and address with yours. For the GCP VM, use `gcloud compute ssh ${INSTANCE_NAME}`; on first use, gcloud automatically generates an SSH key. Once connected to the VM, use `gcloud compute scp` from another terminal to copy files or a directory onto it. section 11.1.2 section 5.1.1
