Headless Raspbian Installation

I had an issue trying to ssh into a headless raspberry pi installation using the latest raspbian image as of writing this on 11/17/2013.  After a bit of research the easiest way is to assign a default ip address to the cmdline.txt file located in the first partition of the sd card.  Add ip=169.243.0.2 (or whatever ip address you would like) to the end of the second line of the file.  Save and reboot.  Assign your comp a static ip address within the ip range of your ip address.  I assigned mine statically as 169.243.0.1.  You should have no problem sshing now and run rpi-config to finish the installation.

After you ssh over ethernet and you want to setup your WPA2 wifi connection with a connected usb wifi adapter, edit the file /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf and add the following:

network={

        ssid="wirelessnetwork"

        psk="password"

        proto=RSN

        key_mgmt=WPA-PSK

        pairwise=CCMP

        auth_alg=OPEN

}

If you are like me and use X instead of vnc or rdp, there is a slight bug in Raspbian as of March 8, 2014 that will render your lxsession through your X-client (XQuartz for mac) with a non-responsive wallpaper and no X throughput.
To fix this:
1. Run lxsession once to create config files.
2. In an ssh session run : cp -rp /etc/xdg/lxpanel/profile/LXDE/* ~/.config/lxpanel/LXDE/
(found here http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=245144#p245144)
3. Run lxsession again and you should have a working lxsession ready to go