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?
Airsonic music server… There are a few quirks getting it all set up properly, but once it works, it just seems to work forever. Samba file sharing server. Also miniDLNA server can make it easy to watch your movie collection on a tv. The airsonic DLNA doesn’t seem to be working currently. I also have a few mastodon bots running from a Pi4. Also could run a tor relay node, which would make it so it’s less idle. I have a lot of stuff on my Pi4 and it is still mostly idle most of the time. Thats fine though. For me it’s not a huge problem, since overall, my goal is to make it use as little power as possible for all those things. I think thats the whole point is to really use the most lightweight computer that can do what you need. If you just need the print server, you could always get a lower power Pi so you can really optimize how much power needs to be used and maybe even do some sort of Wake on LAN setup so it can be sleeping while not in use.
As a general thing because I found myself trying to justify my Gear Acquisition Syndrome – it’s a good idea to split services across devices, rather than having some monolithic home server (which is where most people start). That way if one box goes down, it doesn’t take down your whole stack.
If you have some machines scattered about doing different things, it might be time to consider logically grouping services and splitting them across that hardware.
Some great light lightweight apps for a 4GB Pi:
- Homeassistant
- Fresh RSS
- Paperless NGX
- Syncthing
- PiHole or Adguard home
- Syncthing
You can run an (emulated) IBM mainframe on it!
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.
BirdNet Pi!
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.
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.
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?
I’ll look into how to make it draw less power. Thanks! That didn’t really cross my mind.
Why not use RPi Zero? That would require buying additional hardware. I’d rather use what I already have.
require buying additional hardware.
Trade with someone?
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.
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?
I find the interface feels more modern and interactive, I didn’t like how static PiHole felt with adding to a list then manually restarting Gravity.
AGH has support for more list types, it has more features built-in, such as DNS over TLS so I can use it on my phone even when I’m not home.
And personally I feel like its less buggy, I’ve never encountered a problem on AGH, whereas I did on PiHole.
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.
Ah yes my collection is less than few GB that play I guess
Paperless ngx
