Headless Rasp Pi Zero w

I have just loaded headless raspbian stretch lite on to a Pi Zero W. I had problems trying to run it ssh, so connected screen keyboard etc. It boots fine, with the
pi@raspberrypi: "$
prompt, but if I do an ls to see the files it doesn't come back with any files. Is this correct?


Use "ls -a". A "normal" ls doesn't show you any files with names that begin with '.' (aka "dot files") because normally, you don't care about them and they'd only add clutter.

As for the ssh problem....did you enable ssh? You can do that by either creating a file named "ssh" in the boot partion, or by using raspi-config on the command line (since you're using Rapbian Lite).




once logged on your in your user home directory, and if you get 'lost' traversing different folders you can get back home with a:
cd ~

a cd / will take you to the root of your system from which your list commands will reveal the system directories.
the text preceding the dollar prompt should indicate your current location within the file system.



The tilde is superfluous. Just using cd with no arguments will get you back to the home directory of the login account.

Knowing that a tilde is interpreted by the shell as "home directory" is useful in that you can specify a path relative to your home directory regardless of where your are. For instance, if your working directory is /etc, then ls ~/bin will list the files in the bin directory within your home directory.

How many pointless key strokes

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=204710