Hiya!
I have a Raspberry Pi 4B set up as a print server, so it has to run 24/7. But it irks me that it’s mostly idling.
I’d move my website to it, but I don’t want to deal with it being open to the internet. The same goes for an e-mail server.
I was also thinking of running a Minecraft server on it. (Being able to play on the same world from different devices is kinda cool.) Alas, my RPi only has 4 GiBs of RAM. I worry that such a load would interfere with the print server.
Any ideas what I could run on it?
You can run an (emulated) IBM mainframe on it!
Some great light lightweight apps for a 4GB Pi:
- Homeassistant
- Fresh RSS
- Paperless NGX
- Syncthing
- PiHole or Adguard home
- Syncthing
PiHole is a pretty light load, as are Home Assistant and Music Assistant. Frigate starts to make some heat, so don’t expect to get a full blown video classification / recording system.
I use my Pi 4B as a DVR for movies and OTA television (MythTV).
There are other tools that handle playback better (OSMC/Kodi, etc) but Myth’s configuration and handling of recording schedules is incredibly powerful. Conflict management works well and it can record multiple streams off the same tuner so conflicts are reduced in the first place.
BirdNet Pi!
Joplin notes. A really nice notetaking app you can selfhost. Simple enough but stil verry advanced.
irks me that it’s mostly idling
Well it’s a small processor and relatively efficient one at that so… how about going the opposite direction? How about measuring the power draw on idle? With other task? I don’t actually know if that architecture handles that but I saw some things on the do https://developer.arm.com/documentation/100095/0002/functional-description/power-management/dynamic-power-management?lang=en
Also what about using a RPi Zero instead?
let it run dwarf fortress from within the terminal, then ssh into it from wherever you are so you can play df from anywhere in the world. i did this at work.
AdGuard Home (I prefer it to PiHole)
OtterWiki
Wireguard
Forgejo
Tandoor
Can I please ask why you prefer Adguard over Pihole?
The sd card in my raspberry 3b recently died, and my pihole with it. I am now using Adguard but not sure it’s working well for me, consider going back. What’s the winning argument for you?
Skimmed the title. Brain registered words “rpi” and “linux” underneath it. Instant reaction: “Not another app package format please”. 😶🌫️
I should spend more time reading properly & less time being an old man yelling at tech.
Get yourself and adsb antenna and feed flightaware, flightradar24, and adsbexchange. Help track the skies!
Jellyfin music server. It needs about 1.2 GB of RAM for itself, plus the system.
My PI with podman jellyfin and flatnotes is sitting at 600 MB ram
Mine needs 1.3 GB with an itunes library of 160 gb.
Paperless ngx
You could also setup a git repo for your config files. That way you could revert changes, if you break something.
If you don’t want do open your pi up to the internet you could take a look at tailscale. I use this script on my laptop and home pc to share files with sshfs while having any other traffic go through mullvad. Set this up on your pi with it as an exit node and you basically have access from anywhere.
Pihole, homeassistant, a music server using moodeaudio
Another vote for Pi-hole here. I don’t know how I lived without it before!
Does PiHole ever break a family member’s browsing, and then they don’t know to fix the issue because it would involve understanding opening up the PiHole web interface?
Yes, that does sometimes happen but the frequency depends on the blocking list used, or if multiple lists are used. When a family member encounters something like this, I can usually quite quickly identify the relevant blocked item and whitelist it.
And if you aren’t home or available?
I use an adblocker on both my PC and my phone. Does a Pi-hole have many advantages over that?
PiHole is DNS based ad blocking and local DNS for everything on your network. So, even things that can’t run their own adblocker.
Not just ad blocker, but tracking blockers too. Also, if you’ve got a simple little device like a WiFi controlled outlet switch, and through PiHole you notice it “phoning home” frequently even though you’re not using it… that’s a clue that you might not want to be keeping such things inside the same network where you check on your 401(k) account…
So it can block ads in Google Chrome on my moms phone? Then I’ll have to figure out how to set it up!
Do you often run into issues when blocking traffic like this? I can imagine some software (i.e. Samsung’s or Google’s bloatware) kicking up a fuss.
Ive been using the OISD list for myself and family members for the past couple of years without issues. It’s specifically made to to be unnoticeable, by whitelisting hosts that would cause issues.
One thing to note is that it’s not a full replacement for adblockers, as DNS blockers can only block full hosts and not all ads and tracking are served from dedicated hostnames. Things like YouTube ads will be unaffected by DNS based blocking. It does really make a difference, though, including for apps with banners.
Sometimes it can. Google and Samsung never had an issue though. The more ad lists you setup the more false-positives you get.
But 99% of the time it’s fine. The other 1% you open the dashboard and look at the last few blocks and whitelist whatever it causing issues.
Sometimes I’ve found a site that gets partially blocked and causes a fuss. There’s an option to allowlist domain(s).
Also, some sites try to use ad domains to serve legit traffic, and some use legit domains to serve ads, so it’s not perfect, but it works pretty darn well overall.
Depends on the level of block lists you add. The defaults are pretty sane and it doesn’t need any configuration, you configure your router to use it
One major advantage is that on the domestic TV channels here in the UK which have ad breaks (essentially all of them except the BBC) it removes the ads altogether and the programmes run seamlessly from the part before the ad break into the part after. I still smile every time it happens!
That sounds cool as heck! But I am very confused about how television broadcasting works in the UK. This only works with some sort of over-the-internet TV, right?
Yes, that’s right. It would only work with TV over the internet and not with a digital signal transmitted direct to the TV via aerial.
