I want a Raspberry Pi ready to talk to other machines

Create a Rasbperian Pi image. Raspbian Stretch Lite

cd /Volumes/boot
touch ssh

vi wpa_supplicant.conf

Automatically connect to Wifi network

country=US
ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1
network={
    ssid="testing"
    psk="testingPassword"
}

Turn it on and it should be available via raspberrypi.local.

ssh [email protected]
# update your password with passwd
passwd
# enable ssh
sudo systemctl enable ssh
sudo systemctl start ssh
sudo reboot

Do a few things at a time to make sure they work :)

sudo apt update
sudo apt full-upgrade -y

# install the latest version. 1.2.2 is the latest as of 9/3/2018
curl -o /tmp/consul_1.2.2_linux_arm.zip -L https://releases.hashicorp.com/consul/1.2.2/consul_1.2.2_linux_arm.zip
unzip /tmp/consul_1.2.2_linux_arm.zip
# put it somewhere staff can execute without sudo
sudo mv consul /usr/local/bin/

# create the data-dir
mkdir /var/lib/consul/
# create config-dir
mkdir /etc/consul.d/
mkdir /var/consul
consul agent -config-dir=/etc/consul.d

I’m tired of having to ssh and type my password.

# if you need to generate a public/private key pair
ssh-keygen -t rsa

ssh [email protected] mkdir -p .ssh
cat .ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh [email protected] 'cat >> .ssh/authorized_keys'