Headless armbian minimal OS installation from armbian imager still expects SSH login to complete first time configuration

 

I configured a static IP in armbian imager profile and root password and other user name and password and also other settings.

 

I was expecting the orange pi zero 2W to come online and me to get ping on the set IP address.

 

To my surprise it still asked for all those details as if the profile settings were not applied.

 

SBC Orange Pi Zero 2W

OS Armbian 26.11.0 Minimal Debian 13 Current 6.18.54

Armbian Imageer V2.0.4

I think is it bug. I enabled Wi-Fi. But the IP setting is getting applied for Ethernet (Refer SSH windows showing ethernet IP 192.168.1.255.

 

Off course, because ethernet is assigned 192.168.1.xxx it will not even configure DHCP IP on WiFi in 192.168.1.xxx series.

 

6 hours ago, vtech said:

from armbian imager

I think it might be a design issue. Static IP is meant for wired network only.

This is the base:
https://docs.armbian.com/user-guide/autoconfig/#configuration-directives
that is used by Armbian Imager.

 

I am using this feature reguraly to add a device to wireless network unattended, seleciing SSID / password / Country only.

Thank you Igor for the reply. There might be many like me which try to hook up Linux headless SBC over WiFi to be accessible with predefined IP address over a network.

 

If it is not natively supported by Armnian imager? What would be th other way?

 

I tried to create image using Armbian imager without any profile then tried to connect to wifi over static IP.

 

But still it keeps assigning static IP to LAN.

 

How to work around in this situation to configure static IP to wifi.

 

 

Before imager, I used to simply flash the card by downloading the images from armbian.com and then using armbian-config, I could do what I described above.

 

However now I am not able to make it work. Whatever static IP I try to assign to WiFi, it ends up getting assigned to LAN.

 

Worst part, because now LAN IP is of same series, it make my life further difficult as two interfaces cannot have same IP series.

5 hours ago, vtech said:

If it is not natively supported by Armnian imager?

Its not a problem of imager, but this feature is not designed as you expect:
https://github.com/armbian/build/blob/main/packages/bsp/common/usr/lib/armbian/armbian-firstlogin#L93

 

This needs to be extended here first, then Armbian imager will follow.

 

5 hours ago, vtech said:

How to work around in this situation to configure static IP to wifi.

Workaround is to mount SD card and create / adjust configuration by hand. Do not select static IP, but put WIFI password, SSID, country ... and then, once image is mounted, add static IP and GW to that /etc/netplan/* yaml file. Not the best way, but it should work.

I don't think 192.168.1.255 is a very good choice of ip address as it will be the broadcast address for the 192.168.1.0/24 subnet. It's very unlikely to be a cause for the problem you have but it's probably something you should change.

The problem is the address itself. With netmask 255.255.255.0, 192.168.1.255 is the broadcast address of the 192.168.1.x network, so it can't be used by a device, as @TrevorH also pointed out. The imager accepted it without warning, and the documentation didn't mention it either. That's on us.

 

Because the board couldn't get on the network with that address, first-time setup asked "Connect via wireless? [Y/n]". The imager profile doesn't answer that question, so on a headless board setup waited until you logged in. What to do now: flash again with the same settings but a normal address, for example 192.168.1.50 (anything from .2 to .254 that isn't used by another device and isn't handed out by your router's DHCP).

 

• armbian/build#10840, no blocking questions during unattended first login, plus the DNS fix: https://github.com/armbian/build/pull/10840
• armbian/imager#193, always answers the wireless question: https://github.com/armbian/imager/pull/193
• armbian/imager#194, static IP validation: https://github.com/armbian/imager/pull/194
• armbian/documentation#1419, autoconfig page update: https://github.com/armbian/documentation/pull/1419

On 9/27/2026 at 7:33 PM, vtech said:

How to work around in this situation to configure static IP to wifi.

 

Configure your dhcp server (your router) to handle these things instead of doing it on the device. Use the mac address for the wifi (and wired if you want that to also be static) and set static ip on the router instead. Obviously use different addresses for wifi and lan.

As others have mentioned, don't use *.*.*.255 since that is a broadcast address.

Edited September 29Sep 29 by bedna

Thank you everyone. There was nothing wrong with Armbian Imager.  using last octave 255 was the problem. Changing it to 192.168.1.254 worked like a charm.

One more observation. Whatever IP, Wifi Name and Password I set in armbian imager, I find it very difficult to overwritring them through armbian-config. It keeps falling back to the one set through armbian config profile. I have tried through ornage pi zero 2. Please let me know if someone else have faced this problem. 

I wanted to create a master image for the setup and then clone it on other sd card and just change the wifi name, password and IP address to get going with other location. However, it is not straight forward. I was expecting it to allow reconfiguration through armbian-config. However it seems like there is some other file which is used by amrbian imager to override the setting in armbian-config.

 

Not sure what you mean by "It keeps falling back to the one set through armbian config profile." Are you saying running 'sudo armbian-config' does not change the stuff?

 

Maybe you find this useful for creating "clones":

https://github.com/UnconnectedBedna/shrink-backup

 

You can create a backup, write that image to an sd-card, put the sd-card in a sd-card reader, plug it into a usb (on a system that can read the linux filesystem) and edit the files for wifi and static ip (for minimal images, netplan uses networkd according to documentation). Then plug in that sd-card to the device on the new location and boot.

 

Information on what files to edit can be found here: https://docs.armbian.com/user-guide/networking/