How to use Nautilus to connect to a Raspberry Pi

Raspberry Pi and other single-board tablets have made headlines around the world. Originally designed to be a way of helping kids engage in low-cost software development, using the Raspberry Pi has in fact been astounding, leading to it being used in all. types of equipment.

If you use the Raspberry Pi with a screen, you can turn the Pi on and access it immediately, but many people use the Raspberry Pi in headless mode meaning there is no screen.

The easiest way to connect to the Raspberry Pi is to use SSH, which can be enabled by default by adding an empty file called "ssh" to the boot directory as soon as you install the operating system on the Pi.

This tutorial includes a graphical alternative that allows you to access your files on your Pi using the Nautilus file manager, and the same SSH connection you access forms the command line.

Things to prepare

The Nautilus file manager is very popular in the Linux world. It's the default file manager for the GNOME desktop, default choice on Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, and so on.

If you do not have Nautilus installed, you can install it using one of the following terminal commands:

For Debian-based distributions (such as Debian, Ubuntu, Mint) use the apt command:

sudo apt install nautilus

For Fedora and CentOS, use the dnf command:

sudo dnf install nautilus

For openSUSE, use the zypper command:

sudo zypper -i nautilus

For Arch-based distributions (such as Arch, Antergos, Manjaro) use the pacman command:

sudo pacman -S nautilus

Run Nautilus

If you are using the GNOME desktop environment, you can run Nautilus by pressing the super key ( Windows key ) and typing "nautilus" into the search bar.

An icon will appear called Files . Choose it. If you are using Unity, you can do the same. Again, press the super key and enter "nautilus" in the search bar. Select the Files icon when it appears.

If you are using other desktop environments such as Cinnamon or XFCE, you can try using the search option in the menu or looking through the individual menu options.

If all else fails, you can open a terminal and enter the following:

nautilus &

Mark & allows you to run commands in the background, so move the cursor back to the terminal window.

Find the IP address for the Raspberry Pi

The easiest way to connect to the Pi is to use the hostname you gave your Raspberry Pi when you first setup.

If you leave the default hostname as it is then the hostname will be raspberrypi.

Use the hostname you gave to your Raspberry Pi when you first setup

You can also use the nmap command to try and find devices on the current network as follows:

nmap -sn 192.168.1.0/24

Connect to Raspberry Pi using Nautilus

To connect to the Raspberry Pi using nautilus, select Other Locations at the bottom of the menu on the left.

Now, use the Connect to Server field at the bottom of the window to enter the following information:

sftp://pi@raspberrypi

If your Raspberry Pi is not called raspberrypi then you can use the IP address found by nmap command like this:

sftp://pi@192.168.43.32

'pi' before the @ symbol is the username. If you do not leave pi as the default user, then you will need to specify a user with SSH access using SSH.

When you press the Return key , you will be asked to enter your password.

Enter the password and you should see your Raspberry Pi (your Pi's name or your IP address) appear as a mounted drive.

You can now navigate around all the folders on your Raspberry Pi, copy and paste between other folders on your computer or network.

Bookmark Raspberry Pi

To make connecting to Raspberry Pi easier in the future, you should bookmark the current connection.

To do this, select the pi on . tab at the top of the Nautilus window.

When the drop-down menu opens, select Add to Bookmarks .

A new drive named pi (or the username you used to connect to Pi) will appear on the left menu in Nautilus. You can connect automatically in the future by selecting it.

Kareem Winters

Update 10 October 2020