Raspberry Pi as a PXE server with a proxy DHCP.

This is a great approach for easy deploying various distros over the network instead of using cd-rom/usb sticks. Since I already had a PI running as a torrent client/server and SAMBA why not implement some additional features? After some hours of hacking I manage to get the stuff working perfectly.

Let's get started. Please let me know if any step generates any issues.

Login as root

pi@pi ~ $sudo su -
root@pi:~#apt-get update
root@pi:~#apt-get install syslinux-common #This is for pxe booting files.
root@pi:~#apt-get install dnsmasq #Since I already have a router providing DHCP we need to use a proxy dhcp. dnsmasq is a great set of tools providing us with both tftp and proxy dhcp.

#mkdir /srv/tftpboot #root folder for pxe server.

root@pi:/srv/tftpboot#cp /usr/lib/syslinux/pxelinux.0 . #copy neccacary files for pxe boot.
root@pi:/srv/tftpboot#cp /usr/lib/syslinux/menu.c32 .

root@pi:/srv/tftpboot#mkdir pxelinux.cfg #folder for boot menu

root@pi:/srv/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg

root@pi:/srv/tftpboot/#vim.tiny default #Menu file

Add following info for /srv/tftboot/pxelinux.cfg/default:

DEFAULT menu.c32
PROMPT 0

MENU TITLE PXE Boot

LABEL Test
MENU LABEL Test

Edit dnsmasq settings. Just add following lines at the end of the file.

# vim.tiny /etc/dnsmasq.conf

interface=eth0
dhcp-range=192.168.0.0,proxy
dhcp-boot=pxelinux.0
pxe-service=x86PC,"Booting from Network...",pxelinux
enable-tftp
tftp-root=/srv/tftpboot
dhcp-boot=pxelinux.0,servername,192.168.0.10

#restart dnsmasq to load config

root@pi:/srv/tftpboot#service dnsmasq restart

Try to boot a machine with pxe booting. Just to verify that's working.

Next we need to install nfs support for sharing the mounted iso files.

root@pi:/srv/tftpboot#apt-get install nfs-kernel-server

root@pi:/srv/tftpboot#mkdir /tftpboot/iso #this is where we put distro iso files
root@pi:/srv/tftpboot#mkdir /tftpboot/nfs #this is where we share nfs files
root@pi:/srv/tftpboot#mkdir /tftpboot/nfs/ubuntu #folder for ubuntu dist

Edit nfs shares

root@pi:/srv/tftpboot/#vim.tiny /etc/exports

Add following line:

/srv/tftpboot/nfs/ubuntu/ *(ro,sync,no_subtree_check)

root@pi:/srv/tftpboot# mount -o loop iso/ubuntu-13.04.iso nfs/ubuntu/ #mount iso file to nfs folder
mount: warning: nfs/ubuntu/ seems to be mounted read-only.

Then we need to enable rpcbind and restart nfs

root@pi:/srv/tftpboot#update-rc.d rpcbind enable && update-rc.d nfs-common enable
root@pi:/srv/tftpboot#service rpcbind start
root@pi:/srv/tftpboot#service nfs-kernel-server restart

Add following entry to the /srv/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default

DEFAULT menu.c32
PROMPT 0

MENU TITLE PXE Boot

LABEL Test
MENU LABEL Test

LABEL Ubuntu
        MENU LABEL ^Ubuntu 13.04
        KERNEL nfs/ubuntu/casper/vmlinuz
        APPEND initrd=nfs/ubuntu/casper/initrd.lz boot=casper netboot=nfs
 nfsroot=192.168.0.180:/srv/tftpboot/nfs/ubuntu

Change IP to your server IP in default config file

That should be all. Works flawless for me(I/O performance of the PI is not awesome but definitely works fine). A really neat way of installing without using cd-rom or usb.

Cloud service on the Raspberry Pi.

http://www.tech-fruits.com/archives/5455

Boot an ISO file from your hard drive via Grub2.

Could be useful?

http://www.upubuntu.com/2012/11/how-to-boot-iso-file-from-your-hard.html

Encrypted VPN on the Raspberry Pi.

http://unvexed.blogspot.se/2012/08/how-to-set-up-real-encrypted-vpn.html

Raspberry Pi - Turbo mode.

What does this mean? Comparing the new image with 1GHz turbo enabled, against the previous image at 700MHz, nbench reports 52% faster on integer, 64% faster on floating point and 55% faster on memory.

http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/2008

Twitter!

Wanna hang out?

Twitter: @mount_cifs

Java programming for kids!

http://www.crunchzilla.com/code-monster

Cubieboard: Another Linux computer on a board.

The features of the cubieboard:

1G ARM cortex-A8 processor, NEON, VFPv3, 512KB L2 cache
Mali400, OpenGL ES GPU
1GB DDR3 @480MHz
HDMI 1080p Output
100M Ethernet
4GB Nand Flash
2 USB Host, 1 MMC slot, 1 SATA, 1 ir
96 extend pin including i2c, spi, lcd, sensors, ..
Running Android, Ubuntu and other Linux distributions

http://cubieboard.org/

Cuttlefish

"With Cuttlefish your Ubuntu will adapt its appearance and settings according to the environment"

https://launchpad.net/~noneed4anick/+archive/cuttlefish

Baking Pi - Operating Systems Development

Build your own operating system?

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/freshers/raspberrypi/tutorials/os/

Raspberry Pi As Wake-On-Lan Proxy.

http://www.homeserversoftware.com/raspi/Raspberry%20Pi%20as%20WolProxy%201.0.0.pdf

Nyan Cat Telnet Server

Open up a terminal and run:

telnet miku.acm.uiuc.edu

Webserver on the Raspberry Pi

Wanna run a webserver with Apache, PHP5, MySQL and PHPMyAdmin on the pi? Check out following post:

http://www.raspberrypiforums.com/forum/showthread.php?689-Guide-Building-a-webserver-on-the-Raspberry-Pii

Duke Nukem Pi!

wget http://apt.duke4.net/pool/main/d/duke3d-shareware/duke3d-shareware_1.3d-20_all.deb
wget http://www.berryterminal.com/dl/eduke32_2.0.0rpi+svn2789_armel.deb
sudo dpkg -i duke3d-shareware_1.3d-20_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i eduke32_2.0.0rpi+svn2789_armel.deb
If you want to use head phones instead of HDMI audio: amixer cset numid=3 1
eduke32 

Source: http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=9934

Introducing Ubuntu Web Apps.

Some examples of what users can do with Ubuntu WebApps:

Launch online music site Last.FM directly from the Dash and control the music from Ubuntu’s sound menu

Access and launch your social media accounts (Google+, Twitter, Facebook) from the Launcher, and get native desktop notifications

Quickly and seamlessly upload photos to Facebook from Shotwell
Pause and play the video you are watching on Youtube

See how many unread messages you have in your GMail account, in Ubuntu’s messaging indicator

Ubuntu Web Apps will be available as a preview for Ubuntu 12.04 LTS soon and will be available by default in Ubuntu 12.10. I think we’ve made something that’s about to radically change users’ expectations of the web!

http://blog.canonical.com/2012/07/19/introducing-ubuntu-web-apps-setting-the-web-free-of-the-browser/

How to Overclock your Raspberry Pi’s CPU to 850MHz+ (& RAM to 500MHz)

http://fusionstrike.com/2012/overclock-raspberry-pi-cpu-850mhz-ram-500mhz

From site:

Overclocking your Raspberry Pi is ridiculously easy because the values are simply stored in a text file on the root of the device, they can be easily edited and changed via Nano or VI, and if you brick the device or get a kernal panic, you can change the values by plugging your SD card into a computer and editing the file there.

Pre-compiled XBMC for Raspbian

http://www.memetic.org/pre-compiled-xbmc-for-raspbian/

From site:

As there are no .deb packages for XBMC on Raspbian armhf yet and it takes almost a day to compile it by hand, I’ve tar’d up my pre-compiled version and made it available. My version is confirmed to work on Raspbian Pisces and DarkBasic images from June/July.

Boost your Raspberry Pi!

Found an interesting post regarding tweaking your Raspberry for higher performance.

Basically you can gain up to 25% performance simply modifing some text file :)
There are lot of thing to do, to cut down RAM usage, tune the sd card and hack a bit the CPU.

Here the complete list of improvment:
RAM usage: remove not needed services and daemon, change start.elf file
Disk tuning: we use an sdcard so everything is writing/reading from our sdcard will drop our (already very low) performance. There are lot of improvment we can use to minimize the hidden i/o and it can be integrated in the kernel or not. So, we have to remove unecessary log from /etc/rsyslog.conf, change the disk scheduler to deadline, add noatime/relatime, noadirtime, writeback to ext4 partition and use squashfs+aufs as filesystem for /usr
CPU Hack: just change in config.txt the arm_freq, gpu_freq and sdram_freq... at your own risk!!!

http://rpitc.blogspot.se/2012/06/rpi-tuning-boost-your-rpi.html

Rasberry Pi as a simple seedbox!

Why not? This was my second purpose beside using XBMC. So here we go!

Gonna make use of Transmission, which is a excellent bittorrent client. I assume that you have already installed Debian(otherwise head over here: http://elinux.org/RPi_Easy_SD_Card_Setup).

Make sure to enable SSH-access.

ssh-keygen (I hit enter for all three options to accept defaults and no passphrase)
sudo service ssh start (to start sshd)
sudo update-rc.d ssh defaults (to run the ssh server on startup by default)

Install and configure Transmisson.

sudo apt-get update ; apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install transmission-daemon
sudo mkdir /Downloads
sudo chown debian-transmission /Downloads

Next we need to configure Transmisson.

sudo service transmission-daemon stop

The config file is located at /etc/transmission-daemon/setting-json

Change rpc-authentication-required to false and download-dir to /Downloads

Start the service and we are ready to go!

sudo service transmission-daemon start

Thats it!

Raspberry Pi!

Finally got my hands on one(actually i got two!) of these bad boys. 


So what’s Raspberry Pi? The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard. It’s a capable little PC which can be used for many of the things that your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays high-definition video(more at: http://www.raspberrypi.org/faqs).


One of these babies will replace my 10-years old Xbox1(running XBMC) bedroom media solution. Actually im trying Raspmbc(http://www.raspbmc.com) at the moment and it's looking pretty sweet(still in beta stage). Maybe implement the other one in my car? Or just running a simple server with torrent/NAS support. Time will tell :-)

Since there is no official case for the Raspberry, I had to build my own :-)