Pi IPO on the plate

Can't wait to own part of this valuable resource. I doubt it will be a money-maker, but it's still something worth investing in.

Pi Pico now with wireless

New wireless Raspberry Pi Pico. Not that we will ever get one since resellers will buy them all up, stick them on Amazon, and double the prices...

https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry-pi-pico-w-your-6-iot-platform/

Cool Raspberry Pi Projects

 

Some very cool Pi projects here.

Raspberry Pi Updates

A new Raspberry Pi OS has dropped.

Zabbix on Pi

I have it running on an old laptop currently but I might just have to grab another Pi to make this a permanent deal. I am really liking it. And it's so much more useful and attractive than the current Nagios install on my Pi3.

https://bestmonitoringtools.com/how-to-install-zabbix-on-raspberry-pi-raspbian/
 

Plex on Pi

This weekend's project will include building a Plex server on a Raspberry Pi.

https://www.electromaker.io/tutorial/blog/how-to-install-plex-on-raspberry-pi 

I have yet to identify a suitable host for this operation. I may need to buy a new Pi4. Currently I have Nagios running on one and of course my Pihole on the other. I'm not sure either can handle the load of a Plex server. Not that it will get much use, but still. You never know. I will have to experiment with the functionality and use-cases. I know it can host all sorts of media, including but not limited to photos, movies, and music. So, we will have to see. I will load it up on the Pi3 running Nagios and if it seems useful, I'll grab a cheap Pi4 from the Amazons for a more permanent home. I have some new storage for photo backups arriving soon as well. That might just tie the whole thing together nicely.

Nagios on Pi

Here's a nice tutorial on how to get Nagios running on a Raspberry PI. I used a Pi3 and didn't have any trouble. 

I don't have a lot of devices to monitor inside my little network but it's interesting to see how to add things to Nagios and why there seem to be so many "front ends" built for Nagios management. 

I have yet to figure out Windows system monitoring and whether or not it's worth it to add things like my router and modem. I'd also like to add some external websites and see what features are available for cloud hosting. Fun stuff.

https://raspberrytips.com/nagios-raspberry-pi/

Raspberry Pi Imager

The incredible people over at the Raspberrypi.org have created an awesome tool for writing Pi images to SD cards.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/

There are currently versions for MacOS, Windows, and Ubuntu. This is an incredibly simple tool that replaces the need for third party tools like Etcher or Rufus.

It took me all of 10 minutes to get my backup PiHole back online after decommissioning it for a short while to do other things.

Make sure to mount the newly created SD card and 'touch ssh' to enable ssh access before moving it to the Pi and starting it up.

Google Drive Offline Backup with Raspberry Pi

So, after retiring my Mac Mini earlier this year, I lost my ability to keep an offline backup of my Google drive files. I recently realized that I could put something together with my Raspberry Pi. Here is what I cobbled together.

I updated to the latest version of Raspian and installed the following with apt-get.

ntfs-ng
ssmtp
mailutils

I also spent the $5 on OverGrive for Linux to sync Google Drive to my Pi. They have very good instructions and I didn't have any trouble with that part. It took a couple hours to sync up but works well after the initial download.

Then I plugged in my USB drive and it took a few tweaks to get it working right and writable after a reboot. I followed this page but didn't have to add the delay part at the end.

http://posts.danharper.me/raspberry-pi-2-auto-mount-usb/

Basically, find the block ID of the USB drive.

sudo blkid

# /dev/sda1: LABEL="ELEMENTS" UUID="E033-1109" TYPE="vfat"

Create a new mount point.

sudo mkdir /mnt/usbel  

Take ownership.

sudo chown -R pi:pi /mnt/usbel  

Add the appropriate line to the fstab (update with your blockid and mount point). I installed 'ntfs-ng' for my USB drive and changed 'vfat' to 'ntfs' as well.

UUID=E033-1109 /mnt/usbel vfat auto,users,rw,uid=1000,gid=100,umask=0002 0 0  

Test it with a 'mount -a', adjust accordingly, reboot for a test.

I installed 'ssmtp' and 'mailutils' as well to send me a report of what gets updated. Installing these was a bit tricky with Google authentication. You will just have to search for the answers as I am sure they will change and might be different depending on your Google account. I had to enable two factor auth and generate an App Password for the outgoing mail to work. You can create a special email account for this just to send email if you don't want to mess with your default gmail account.

Next, add the rsync command to your crontab. It should look something like this.

0 5 * * * /usr/bin/rsync -avh --delete /home/pi/Google\ Drive/ /mnt/usb/GoogleBackup | mail -s "Google Drive Rsync Report" user@domain.com

It might be a good idea to manually test the rsync command and complete a copy first to avoid an errors that might take place.

I have other versioning systems in place for the live copy of my Google Drive (aside from the archives and recycle bin provided by Google). This one give me the peace of mind of having one on a USB drive I could grab in an emergency. Not that grabbing the entire Raspberry Pi would be much different. I guess this was also just fun to do.

Raspberry Pi Project

I have been working with my son lately on a project for school using a Raspberry Pi for a Wifi "Honey Pot". We have been following a rather old blog post but it still works fine and is very informative.

https://andrewmichaelsmith.com/2013/08/raspberry-pi-wi-fi-honeypot/

We haven't had much trouble but can't get the redirect down just yet. I wouldn't really call this example specifically a "Honey Pot" as it doesn't really collect, or attempt to collect, any kind of data from people who connect. It's more of a proof of concept. The capability and groundwork is certainly there but it's merely a redirect of local web traffic to a local Apache install.