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?
I run a asterisk PJSIP VOIP server on my raspberry pi 5 8GB. I had to use the git and build and recompile and manually load all PJSIP modules because for some reason I couldn’t even find an asterisk package on apt db for ARM64 for some fucking reason. Also had to containerize it within a docker because the shit couldn’t properly compile without interfering with native system binaries. Shit is so fucking goated and can do PSTN via twilio trunking (call numbers outside of the phone server’s number base so basically anyone as long as you make the phone numbers parsed in extensions.conf for each country you wanna call XD). Currently works within LAN but I am planning on making it accessible over the internet using my domain and a tunnel for UDP if possible or just a VPN since my router is being a removed with SIP packets rn. I am having trouble with that part but once it’s done I can quite literally ditch any phone plan and use it. Twilio hardly even charges shit for voice rates 🤣🤣🤣. You could also self host your domain + email providing service and then connect that to thunderbird for full schizo-level privacy or sum shit. That’s what I do to ditch web-email BS
So I have a smart plug set up on my printer and print server (old HP 4P with separate network print server.
I have NodeRed watching my CUPS queues via HTTP scraping, and if it sees a job in the queue for that printer, it turns on the print server and printer via the smartplug over wifi. I have seen someone link a project that does something similiar.
Pihole, homeassistant, a music server using moodeaudio
Another vote for Pi-hole here. I don’t know how I lived without it before!
Does PiHole ever break a family member’s browsing, and then they don’t know to fix the issue because it would involve understanding opening up the PiHole web interface?
Yes, that does sometimes happen but the frequency depends on the blocking list used, or if multiple lists are used. When a family member encounters something like this, I can usually quite quickly identify the relevant blocked item and whitelist it.
And if you aren’t home or available?
Well, it takes a while longer to fix. The only times it’s happened (perhaps twice in 6 months) it’s been when a family member has been trying to buy something from a website. I can also access the Pi-hole remotely and—in the worst case scenario—just turn off blocking altogether for a short period.
Thanks for sharing.
It does look like there’s a way to use PiHole personally for those who share the network with those who don’t want it: leave default DNS server setttings alone except for your own devices.
I use an adblocker on both my PC and my phone. Does a Pi-hole have many advantages over that?
PiHole is DNS based ad blocking and local DNS for everything on your network. So, even things that can’t run their own adblocker.
So it can block ads in Google Chrome on my moms phone? Then I’ll have to figure out how to set it up!
Do you often run into issues when blocking traffic like this? I can imagine some software (i.e. Samsung’s or Google’s bloatware) kicking up a fuss.
Sometimes I’ve found a site that gets partially blocked and causes a fuss. There’s an option to allowlist domain(s).
Also, some sites try to use ad domains to serve legit traffic, and some use legit domains to serve ads, so it’s not perfect, but it works pretty darn well overall.
Depends on the level of block lists you add. The defaults are pretty sane and it doesn’t need any configuration, you configure your router to use it
Running those adblockers on your devices is extremely insecure. They register as a VPN and intercept HTTPS traffic. They decrypt the encrypted traffic, filter it, and encrypt again meaning all your communications are signed by this single app’s certificate. Not to mention any vulnerability would wreak havoc.
One major advantage is that on the domestic TV channels here in the UK which have ad breaks (essentially all of them except the BBC) it removes the ads altogether and the programmes run seamlessly from the part before the ad break into the part after. I still smile every time it happens!
That sounds cool as heck! But I am very confused about how television broadcasting works in the UK. This only works with some sort of over-the-internet TV, right?
Yes, that’s right. It would only work with TV over the internet and not with a digital signal transmitted direct to the TV via aerial.
BirdNet Pi!
Some great light lightweight apps for a 4GB Pi:
- Homeassistant
- Fresh RSS
- Paperless NGX
- Syncthing
- PiHole or Adguard home
- Syncthing
You could pihole
Another vote for PiHole. It keeps your home network cleaner by ignoring the ads.
On my Rpi4B I run syncthing 24/7. It acts as my sync hub. All other machines are connected to it.
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.
SANE scan server? Paperless ngx also comes to my mind, find it pretty useful.
I was trying to set up a scan server last week. No luck yet. 😅
Paperless ngx looks looks amazing. I was actually thinking of finding a solution for this type of thing as pdfgrep was getting kinda slow.
Get yourself and adsb antenna and feed flightaware, flightradar24, and adsbexchange. Help track the skies!
mine is my reverse proxy, using the nginx proxy manager docker install method
Maybe Nextcloud? Jellyfin?
I’ll add Jellyfin to the list! Do you need a specific client to receive a stream or can say VLC or mpv do it?
Typically a web browser or dedicated app, but it’s open source so there are options. You might be able to stream directly with VLC, not sure.
I wouldn’t recomend Jellyfin if it will transcode anything on a rpi4b.
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.
Interesting points, thank you.
Today I wanted to block everything with facebook and Instagram, it looks like I am hand-editing a config file to do so. And it applies to the entire network; AGH has no concept of user groups. Am I missing something really obvious?
That would be something you do within the Client Settings page. You can have custom settings that are separate from the Global Default.
Jellyfin music server. It needs about 1.2 GB of RAM for itself, plus the system.
