Raspberry Pi as a local server for self hosting applications • Hacker News Board

Re: Raspberry Pi as a local server for self hosting applications

#61

Post by rovr138 » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 10:02 PM UTC

codetrotter wrote: post #18

rovr138 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Latest Pi’s can boot from external media. It’s possible to boot from an SSD

You can't just say that without including a link :P Anyways, I assume that the following is what you are referring to: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberry... In that case, the following from the linked page might be worth making note of: > To enable USB host boot mode, the Raspberry Pi needs to be booted from an SD card with a special option to set the USB host boot mode bit in the one-time p…

That's specific to the

> Raspberry Pi 2B v1.2, 3A+, 3B, Compute Module 3

Further down,

>Raspberry Pi 3B+, Compute Module 3+

> The Raspberry Pi 3B+ and Compute Module 3+ support USB mass storage boot out of the box. The steps specific to previous versions of Raspberry Pi do not have to be executed.

Then the last one,

> Raspberry Pi 4

>The Raspberry Pi 4 currently requires non-default firmware to enable USB mass storage boot: see the USB mass storage boot section of the Pi 4 Bootloader Configuration page for more information.

But overall, it's possible in some way with all these versions,

>Available on Raspberry Pi 2B v1.2, 3A+, 3B, 3B+, and 4B only.

Re: Raspberry Pi as a local server for self hosting applications

#62

Post by rovr138 » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 10:05 PM UTC

maxmunzel wrote: post #32

gonehome wrote: post #26

How do people access these servers off of their home network (or do they not?). That seems like most of the value to me, hosting some service you can access from anywhere without having to use Digital Ocean. It seems like most residential ISPs don't provide a static IP and some block port 80? I think forcing ISPs to allow home users to serve traffic via some standard method would go a long way to enabling a more dece…

I’m using a 3$ VPS (hetzner) as a VPN server and access my local servers that way. You also get a regular VPN for free that way and setup is trivial if you use wireguard.

I use a $15/year vps for this. Acts as a bastion to all the servers I connect to.

Re: Raspberry Pi as a local server for self hosting applications

#63

Post by rovr138 » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 10:07 PM UTC

Waterfall wrote: post #28

entropicdrifter wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention the built-in advantage of Intel's much better supported QuickSync video encode/decode if you're doing any sort of media streaming.

Won't matter if your main computer does the decoding, and for the price of one good computer that can stream to all devices including crappy ones versus all good ones and a cheap NAS to host, which would you choose?

Guess the question then becomes, do you need transcoding on the device streaming?

Re: Raspberry Pi as a local server for self hosting applications

#64

Post by jakobdabo » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 10:07 PM UTC

gonehome wrote: post #26

How do people access these servers off of their home network (or do they not?). That seems like most of the value to me, hosting some service you can access from anywhere without having to use Digital Ocean. It seems like most residential ISPs don't provide a static IP and some block port 80? I think forcing ISPs to allow home users to serve traffic via some standard method would go a long way to enabling a more dece…

Tor hidden service. Simple to configure, just works.

Re: Raspberry Pi as a local server for self hosting applications

#65

Post by dboreham » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 10:08 PM UTC

Ime devices with a proper CPU and SSD such as Intel NUC and Beelink are the MV solution to run server software without constant headaches due to slowness, limited memory and flash wearout. Ymmv of course. The Pi4 with 8G is getting close.

Re: Raspberry Pi as a local server for self hosting applications

#66

Post by gerdesj » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 10:08 PM UTC

antognini wrote: post #6

One thing to watch out for when doing something like this is that the Raspberry Pi will by default put your file system on the SD card it boots from. SD cards aren't meant to support a lot of write/erase cycles, so it's easy to end up with a corrupt SD card after a few months to a year depending on what you're doing on your Pi. A workaround that can save you some headaches here is to only boot from the SD card (which…

Very true for a given value of true 8) You need to evaluate all the components. The RPi itself is a decent piece of kit, well tested and safe to use. Get a decent power supply to it - either a RPi branded one or at least a decent mobile charger from a brand that you trust.

I generally use a decent USB stick nowadays. RPi 4 from about a month or so ago onwards will do this out of the box. You can also put a second USB stick in and clone the thing every now and then.

You can PXE boot them as well (citation needed) and that brings nfs and iSCSI to bear. That's my long term plan for fleets of them.

For the semi casual user, I recommend the dual USB stick combo. Quite easy to set up and you can always whip out the backup and test it on another device.

Re: Raspberry Pi as a local server for self hosting applications

#67

Post by codezero » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 10:10 PM UTC

I haven't been into computer hardware lately, but I decided to pick up a NAS, and was pleased to learn that they're now just a complete computer - I've started using VMs living on my NAS to do this kind of thing, which is quite nice. Synology's interface is not bad either, but I imagine others have come up with even better ways to use these systems.

Obviously a RPi is a way cheaper way to get a lot of the same work done though :)

Re: Raspberry Pi as a local server for self hosting applications

#68

Post by rwbhn » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 10:13 PM UTC

jakobdabo wrote: post #59

antognini wrote: post #6

One thing to watch out for when doing something like this is that the Raspberry Pi will by default put your file system on the SD card it boots from. SD cards aren't meant to support a lot of write/erase cycles, so it's easy to end up with a corrupt SD card after a few months to a year depending on what you're doing on your Pi. A workaround that can save you some headaches here is to only boot from the SD card (which…

Most writes are the logs, I use log2ram [1], it reduces SD writes substantially. [1] https://github.com/azlux/log2ram

Thx! Looks like just what I need.

Re: Raspberry Pi as a local server for self hosting applications

#69

Post by yegle » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 10:14 PM UTC

For anyone with a home server and has the need to remotely access your self-hosted websites, https://pomerium.io has been a wonderful piece of software in my stack.

You can safely expose your self-hosted websites to the internet and without the hassle of needing to have a VPN connection first.

Re: Raspberry Pi as a local server for self hosting applications

#70

Post by fao_ » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 10:16 PM UTC

rjsw wrote: post #37

gonehome wrote: post #26

How do people access these servers off of their home network (or do they not?). That seems like most of the value to me, hosting some service you can access from anywhere without having to use Digital Ocean. It seems like most residential ISPs don't provide a static IP and some block port 80? I think forcing ISPs to allow home users to serve traffic via some standard method would go a long way to enabling a more dece…

Switch to a better ISP.

I don't see how this is seriously a suggestion. Not everyone lives in Silicon Valley and earns a >20k/yr paycheck. There are other things to consider like reliability, cost, that force your hand.