This tutorial aims to be a fast* tutorial for installing Ubuntu Server into a Raspberry Pi and accessing it via ssh. First, download the image from here. Then, using Balena Etcher boot the image into a USB. The process is simple, just follow the steps of the program.

Now, the configuration part. Access your bootable USB. In my case I accessed it via the bash command line with cd /Volumes/system-boot but you can access it in any other ways. In order to enable SSH on the first boot, you need to create a file called ssh with nothing on it. But, to be able to connect to the Raspberry you also need it to be connected to a wifi. By default, it doesn’t connect to any wifi, just to the ethernet in case it is plugged. So you need to modify the network-config file. At the end of the file you can see something like this

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version: 2
ethernets:
  eth0:
    dhcp4: true
    optional: true

After that there are many commented lines. You need to uncomment and modify those lines. The first you need to do is to add your wifi**. For that, after access-points include the SSID which is the name of the wifi, and the password of that wifi:

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access-points:
  <SSID>:
    password: "<password>"

Be sure to maintain those commas and remove any other wifis from there.

Finally, insert the SD card, start your raspberry and you are free to go. Connect to your Raspberry Pi using the command ssh ubuntu@<raspberry IP>***, enter the default password “ubuntu”. You will be asked to change the default password and voilà, you have a server.

*For a more detailed explanation you can go to the official Ubuntu page. And for more details on how netplan and their config files work you can go to their reference.

**If you have a Mac and an iPhone you can create a wifi hotspot from the iPhone’s internet. That way you can access your Raspberry anywhere. Here you have a tutorial for creating the hotspot. One more thing, use the channel 1, otherwise the Raspberry Pi won’t be able to connect to that frequency.

***To find the assigned IP yourself you can try nmaping several IPs in the range to see which one has the 22 port open. You can also follow this tutorial for MacOS or any other you find.