Tag: Hosting

Uploading and serving image and video captures from a Raspberry Pi as a backyard public camera

Copying backyard camera videos and pictures to a remote web server using rclone

Copying backyard camera videos and pictures to a local web server using rclone

Copying backyard camera videos and pictures to a Google Drive using rclone

Copying backyard camera videos and pictures to a Microsoft OneDrive using rclone

Add and use filesystem tools Overview You need to add the tools that will let you format/create one or more additional volumes/filesystems of your choice.

Daniel’s documentation for using Alpine Linux for local servers on x86-64 and Raspberry Pi family. These documents use only the ‘main’ repository, except in one or more optional HowTo guides.

Important post-install configuration Overview The following are not part of the base install, but either can be essential to system function (like adding boot entropy for some headless systems like the Raspberry Pi) or are widely accepted best practices (like creating a non-root admin user and limiting time spent as root).

Setup network required for package installation Use Alpine Linux setup sub-scripts for network/DNS Execute setup-keymap # To make sure you can successfully do keyboard input Execute setup-hostname.

Use Alpine Linux on Raspberry Pi as a server Special Notes NOTE: For boot to succeed /media/mmcblk0p1/usercfg.txt must exist. See kernel parameters and device-tree settings for information on what you can set in that file.

Create a non-root admin user Avoid operating as root, where possible It is generally considered an administrative best practise to avoid logging in and/or operating with elevated privileges, to the extent reasonable to do so.

Create semi-data/semi-diskless install Overview This guide presumes you are booted into a fresh install media (no stored configuration). It further presumes that neither the pure diskless configuration from the Alpine wiki, the data configuration from the Alpine wiki, nor the system disk (classic) configuration from the Alpine wiki suits your situation.

For headless systems, add boot entropy Overview As mentioned in Raspberry Pi - Alpine Linux under ‘Troubleshooting: Long boot time when running headless’, some systems might take an excessively long time to boot when no peripherals are attached (not only with the Pi series).

Recommended tweaks and configuration Overview Assuming the reboot was successful, it is time to make your system more useful. Otherwise see Firstboot troubleshooting Commit changes at your preferred granularity Don’t forget that these changes will not survive reboot unless you commit your changes.

Server install & configure Overview This set of guides and recommendations is aimed at the use of Alpine as your local servers on physical hardware where you have access to the console on boot.

Use modified ‘setup-alpine’ procedure Overview You’ll want to be careful during the LBU configuration and APK cache configuration sections using the default setup-alpine script. You also need to have pre-mounted the partition(s) that will hold the LBU and APK cache (see Create semi-data/semi-diskless install).

Normally when using Docker one only wants specific unicast ports forwarded, so the standard Docker paradigm of using NAT to forward ports to the container works. However, when using Docker to containerize internal services like Samba (which needs a combination of unicast and broadcast UDP), LLMNR (Windows multicast address resolution), or mDNS a.k.a Bonjour (Apple multicast address resolution) one may find that the standard Docker model is insufficient.

Keeping your DNS queries from your local network to public DNS servers private in transit by using DNS over TLS on a Raspberry Pi is ridiculously easy.

A short talk / presentation about using the Raspberry Pi as a Public Backyard Camera (e.g. live streamed or time lagged snapshots of a bird feeder).

It seems I’m doing more front-end web work than is ideal these days. I say that because I tend to prefer technical aspects of web development…

This is true despite the fact that I am moving my websites away from OVHcloud and/or self-hosting, and I am making a shift to using Microsoft 365.

Streaming from a Raspberry Pi as a backyard public camera