A big number of Raspberry Pi users love to experiment with the device. For many, that was the motivation of purchasing it in the first place. It is not uncommon to lose some files or corrupt an operating system on your Raspberry Pi every now and then, as a result of experimentation. But this is never much of a problem – that is, as long as you have made proper backups.
System Administration
How to change keyboard shortcuts on Raspberry Pi
Keyboard shortcuts are a terminal user’s best friend. They make life easier for those of us that spend a lot of time tinkering in our command line terminal or those that always seem to have at least a dozen windows open simultaneously. On the default Raspberry Pi OS, there are already a few handfuls of keyboard shortcuts ready to use. And even more can be configured.
How to use curl to get public IP address
The curl command on Linux systems is commonly used to download and upload files to or from a remote server. Another interesting thing we can use it for is to determine the public IP address of our system. To do this, we can use curl to query websites that are configured to do nothing more than return the IP address of whichever system is connecting to it. This is one of the quickest and easiest ways to get your public IP address on the Linux command line. In this tutorial, you will see how to use the curl command to get your system’s public IP address.
How to make a bootable USB from an ISO in Linux
The purpose of this tutorial is to make a bootable USB drive from an ISO file. USB drives have recently overtaken CDs and DVDs as the primary media of physically distributed software. It is now a common task for system administrators and normal users to install operating systems and software via USB. When you download a Linux distro, chances are that it will come as an ISO file and you will need to burn it to USB in order to install Linux on a computer. This allows you to boot directly into the Linux installer. Similarly, we can also put other software on the USB drive, assuming that the installer is distributed as an ISO file.
How to increase the security of systemd services
Nowadays all major Linux distributions adopted Systemd as their init system/service manager. Creating a systemd service is just a matter of writing a “.service” unit in the appropriate directory, and manage it using the systemctl utility. When starting a service, or launching a process in general, we want to make sure it runs with the lowest possible set of privileges it needs to accomplish the task. Systemd provides a series of options we can be use to fine-tune the behavior of a service, granting or denying privileges in a granular way, and ensuring a certain level of isolation from the rest of the system.
Decoding Raspberry Pi: Which OS to Choose?
Users have many choices when it comes to operating systems for the Raspberry Pi. This was not always the case, like when the Raspberry Pi premiered over a decade ago, support for the device was quite limited. These days, many different Linux distributions have added support for ARM devices like the Raspberry Pi, and there are even a good number of Linux distributions that have been developed specifically for use on the Raspberry Pi.
How to check power consumption on Raspberry Pi
As you can probably guess just from its small size and light weight, the Raspberry Pi does not use a lot of power. While it is nice to know that your Raspberry Pi will not be adding much onto your electric bill, exactly how much power does it actually consume? This can be tricky to answer and we need to rely on external devices, since power consumption can’t be accurately measured from software alone.
How to install OpenMediaVault on Raspberry Pi
OpenMediaVault is software that transforms your computer into a NAS (network attached storage) server. Since it features support for the Raspberry Pi, it has become a popular choice for users that are looking to run a lightweight and inexpensive NAS operation. OpenMediaVault comes with a lot of the software and features you will need in order to manage multiple storage disks and share them out to other devices on your local network or even over the internet.
Raspberry Pi Server/Viewer VNC configuration
If you plan to remotely administer your Raspberry Pi, then using VNC is one of the most effective ways to do so when it comes to remote desktop applications. VNC allows you to use another device to connect to the Raspberry Pi, and use your mouse and keyboard as if they were physically plugged into the device itself. The reverse is also possible, meaning that the Raspberry Pi can be used as the client device and connect to other computers remotely.
How to create secure and efficient backups with Restic
Restic is a cross-platform, free and open source program written in Go. We can use it to create compressed, encrypted and space efficient backups, since it is smart enough to archive only changed fragments of files. Restic can use many storage services as targets, such as Google Drive or AWS (Amazon Web Services) S3 buckets, but works also locally and over plain SFTP connections.
How to network boot Raspberry Pi
Using network boot on the Raspberry Pi allows you to install the operating system (Raspberry Pi OS) onto the device with nothing more than an internet connection. Contrast this to the typical way of getting an OS onto the device by using a separate PC and the Raspberry Pi imager tool. With network boot, the operating system can be downloaded online and installed onto a blank SD card that is inserted into the Raspberry Pi right before the installation process.
Top Raspberry Pi Alternatives for Your Needs
When it comes to single board computers, the Raspberry Pi is probably the most popular and well known choice in the field. But it is far from the only contender. Depending on your needs for a small sized computer, there are multiple alternatives that you can consider, some of which may fit your purpose even better than the Raspberry Pi.