Tag: linux

My Raspberry Pi Networked Media/NAS Server Setup

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I have come to a very good place with my media server setup using my Raspberry Pi. The whole thing is accessible using the network, over a wide range of devices which is ideal for me and the other people living in my house.

If you don’t need to see any of the installation, the following software is running on the server: Samba, Minidlna, Deluge & Deluge-Web and NTFS-3G.

The combination of all of this software allows me to access my media and files on pretty much any device I would want to. This is a great combination of software to run on your Pi if you’re not doing anything with it.

So let’s begin with the install!

I’m using the latest build of Raspian, the download and install of that is pretty simple, instructions here.

Unless you can hold your media on the SD card your Pi’s OS is installed on, you’ll need some kind of external storage. In my case, I’m using a 3TB external HDD.

We’ll need to mount this drive, I’ve already written a post on how to do this, check that out here.

Now we should involve Samba. Again, it’s a pretty simple install.

sudo apt-get install samba samba-common-bin

Once it installs you should already see signs of it working. If you’re on windows, make sure network sharing is on, and browse to the “network” folder. It should show up as “RASPBERRYPI” as seen in this image:

The only real tricky part is configuring it. Here is an untouched version of the samba config file. On your pi, it is found at:

/etc/samba/smb.conf

You can edit it like you would any config file. This is the configuration following is the configuration I am running on my Pi, if you want a configuration that will work with no problems without any modifications, replace the existing /etc/samba/smb.conf with this version.

There are only a few differences between the standard version and the version I’m using. The biggest one being the actual “Share” being used seen here:

[HDD_Share]
   comment = External HDD Share
   path = /media/USBHDD
   browseable = yes
   read only = no
   valid users = YOURUSER #IF ON A BASIC RASPBERRY PI, US THE USER "pi"
   only guest = no
   create mask = 0777
   directory mask = 0777
   public = no

Basically, this shares the external HDD you just mounted to the network. You can insert this share anywhere in your document and it will work. Once you update your config file, you have to add your user to samba. If you haven’t done anything but install raspbian, your username on the pi should still be “pi” so the following should do the following:

sudo smbpasswd -a pi

Enter your new samba password twice and then you’re good to go after restarting samba.

sudo /etc/init.d/samba restart

In windows you can go to “network” option in My Computer and see your share.

If you’re like me though, you’re going to want multiple users for multiple shares. Samba only can only have users that are members of the system, so in order to add a new user to samba, you have to add a user to the Raspberry Pi. For example, let’s add the user ‘testuser’:

sudo mkdir /home/testuser/
sudo useradd -d /home/testuser -s /bin/false -r testuser
sudo passwd testuser
sudo chown testuser /home/testuser
sudo chgrp users /home/testuser
sudo smbpasswd -a testuser
sudo /etc/init.d/samba restart

I have written a bash script to do this automatically.

On the share level, the line of valid users = should be set to whichever user you want to be able to use the share.

That’s pretty much it for Samba. I’m probably going to do a guide on accessing your shares via SSH tunneling when the need for me to do so arises. I’ll link that here if it ever happens. Now on to minidlna.

MiniDLNA is a very lightweight DLNA server. DLNA is a protocal specifically for streaming media to a huge array of devices from computers to iOS devices or gaming consoles or smart TV’s. I have spent quite a bit of time using minidlna, and have reached a configuration that works extremely well with the raspberry pi. The install is very easy, much like samba, it’s the configuration that is tricky.

sudo apt-get install minidlna

The config file i’m using is found here. There Pi actually handles the streaming really really well, and there only a few things you need to change in the config file, and they are mostly aesthetic. The following lines are examples of media locations for each type of file.

# If you want to restrict a media_dir to a specific content type, you can
# prepend the directory name with a letter representing the type (A, P or V),
# followed by a comma, as so:
#   * "A" for audio    (eg. media_dir=A,/var/lib/minidlna/music)
#   * "P" for pictures (eg. media_dir=P,/var/lib/minidlna/pictures)
#   * "V" for video    (eg. media_dir=V,/var/lib/minidlna/videos)
#
# WARNING: After changing this option, you need to rebuild the database. Either
#          run minidlna with the '-R' option, or delete the 'files.db' file
#          from the db_dir directory (see below).
#          On Debian, you can run, as root, 'service minidlna force-reload' instead.

media_dir=A,/media/USBHDD/Documents/Media/Audio
media_dir=P,/media/USBHDD/Documents/Media/Images/Photos
media_dir=V,/media/USBHDD/Documents/Media/Video
media_dir=/media/USBHDD/Documents/Media/

And changing this line will change the name of the DLNA server on the network:

# Name that the DLNA server presents to clients.
friendly_name=Raspberry Pi DLNA

That’s pretty much all there is to it.

You can stream the files all over the place, the following images show it being used on my kindle and another computer. I stream files to my xbox 360 all the time.

The last major component of this media server is Deluge, let’s proceed with that install.

Deluge is a torrent client for linux servers. The coolest part is it has a very good web based GUI for control. The install isn’t too straightforward, but there is no real specific configuration. The following commands will get things up and running.

sudo apt-get install python-software-properties
sudo add-apt-repository 'deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/deluge-team/ppa/ubuntu precise main'
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -t precise deluge-common deluged deluge-web deluge-console
sudo apt-get install -t precise libtorrent-rasterbar6 python-libtorrent
sudo apt-get install screen
deluged
screen -d -m deluge-web

And there you go! You can now torrent files directly into your Samba shares which is hugely useful and more secure, the following is me doing just that:

The last thing that needs to be done is run a few commands at boot, particularly mount the HDD and start deluge-web. The easiest way to do this crontab. First run:

sudo crontab -e

Then add the following two lines:

sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda1/ /media/USBHDD/
screen -d -m deluge-web

So it looks like this:

And everything will start working upon boot!

Thank you very much for reading. If you have any questions, please leave a comment.

PiPlanter 2 | Little Plants 1 / Germination Setup

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The plants are coming along quite nicely, here is an album of images:

As for my grow setup in this stage, it’s pretty simple. Basically I keep the two desk lamps I have from that area on 24/7 and on the plants. Every morning I put about a half gallon into each of the trays. I also spray about 8oz onto the surface of the plants. Working pretty well so far, all of this growth is only after a week and two days.

PiPlanter 2 | Update / Dirt / Germs

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Hi! In order to do PiPlanter 2 at the scale I want, as always, I need money. I’m applying to this grant to hopefully take this project to unreal new heights. In order to apply, one of the component is assembling a budget. In order to do that though, I need to “complete” the whole project… in my head. I have to be able to think of exactly how I want to do the project. From PCB design to pump system, I have to plan it all in order to assemble a realistic budget. There is a lot of good work that comes with this, like schematics and the budget itself. I’ll for sure upload all of the documentation.

On a more stimulating note: I’ve planted the tomato plants in the same manor that I did last summer and here are some pictures of the growth so far.

Here is the dirt and planted seeds:

Here are some very small sprouts that have developed in the last two days.

PiPlanter 2 | Getting Started Again

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So I have decided to re write the PiPlanter from the ground up. In essence, it will accomplish the same exact thing but I’d like it to be a lot more of a stable platform to expand upon in the future. I’d also like PiPlanter to be professional enough to bring to market. First off there are a few things you’d need install & a few modifications you’d need to make to Raspian. First thing’s first, you’ll need to enable SPI in the kernel so:

sudo vi /etc/modprobe.d/raspi-blacklist.conf

Comment out the spi-bcm2708 line so it looks like this:

#blacklist spi-bcm2708

Then run this to make it more permanent.

sudo modprobe spi-bcm2708

Now for the real meat of it. You’ll need these packages for SPI and the WiringPi library makes things a whole lot easier for us. This program also relies very heavily

sudo apt-get install python-imaging python-imaging-tk python-pip python-dev git
sudo pip install spidev
sudo pip install wiringpi
sudo apt-get install apache2
sudo apt-get install mysql-server
sudo apt-get install php5
sudo apt-get install php5-mysql
sudo pip install tweepy</pre>
<pre style="color: #333333;">sudo pip install apscheduler</pre>
<pre>

Revised python code next post.

Server Upgrade | Migrating WordPress

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Like I said in my first post for this server upgrade, a secondary purpose of this new server was to migrate my wordpress blog to a more stable server setup.

For my particular setup, I’ll be running my blog inside of a virtual machine running ubuntu 12.04 inside of a new server running ubuntu 12.04 as detailed in this post. This migration method does not care what kind of server you are using, so whatever setup you’re currently running should be fine.

The migration itself is remarkably easy thanks to a wordpress plugin called duplicator. Essentially the process is this.

On the old server, update wordpress and install duplicator. Go through the instructions listed in duplicator and save your files in a place where you can get them.

On the new server, install the latest version of wordpress and makes sure it is working 100%. You can use this guide if you need help doing that.

The only thing that stuck for me was the fact that after you finish the wordpress install, you need to run the following command.

chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www

This will give apache user permissions to write to disk.

Other than that, just follow the duplicator instructions.

Creating an Email Server at Home Inside of a Virtual Machine Using Linux & Citadel

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Citadel makes this pretty sophisticated and money saving procedure really easy. Once I figured out what I was doing, the install took me about 45 minutes to complete, here are the steps I took!

I’m running PHPvirtualbox on ubuntu server 12.04 as detailed in this post.

First thing’s first, get a virtual machine with a debian based OS loaded up.

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I’m using 12.04 for the VM as well

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Then go through the OS install, only installing openssh-server as additional software.

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First we need to give the server a Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN)

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You will need to edit the

/etc/hosts
/etc/hostname

files.

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Change whatever name you chose in the install process to ‘mail’ in the /etc/hostname

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Modify your /etc/hosts as follows. The green box is the domain you will be using.

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After rebooting, you will be greeted with a your hostname set to mail. You can still log in with your regular username & password.

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Running

hostname
hostname -f

Should yield very similar results.

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Now we need to establish a static for our virtual machine.

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In PHPvirtualbox, set the network mode to ‘Bridged Adapter’

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Running the following commands

hostname
hostname -f
ifconfig

And getting these results means our configuration is ready to go!

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I am now using the Putty window so I can copy commands in. First log in as root.

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Run

</pre>
apt-get install build-essential curl g++ gettext shared-mime-info libssl-dev
curl http://easyinstall.citadel.org/install | bash
<pre>

and go through the citadel install process.

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I’m changing the default port to 80 for now, just for simplicity.

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After the install, reboot the VM.

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Now log in to citadel!

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Now we need to do MX forwarding. My DNS host is network solutions, but the process is very similar regardless to which provider you use.

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Again, your domain is represented by the green box.

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The yellow box is your IP

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You can use whatismypi to determine your IP address. If it is dynamic, you can use No-IP to get a static one .

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The records should look something like this.

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Now in citadel, you need to go to ‘Administration’ -> ‘Domain names and Internet mail configuration’ and add your domain.

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Now open the following ports on your router. This is dangerous, but IMO worth it.

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Now we test!

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There we go! Pretty much no cost email addresses!

Thanks for reading, leave any improvements in the comments.

Server Upgrade | Citadel Install Inside of a Virtual Machine

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Okay! So for now, I’ve landed on Citadel for the email server software that I’m going to use. I’ve bounced around between four different clients (iredmail, Citadel, Ubuntu’s Suite, and Zimbra) and have landed on Citadel because I can install it (lol) and because it suites my needs better. The other software suites are basically wrappers of a bunch of smaller discrete softwares that build up the Ubuntu Suite. This is fine for dedicated servers, but since I’m going to be running this inside of a Virtual Machine, it is more convenient for me to use Citadel.

The install is pretty simple once you get the prerequisites installed and prep the VM itself.

Since it’s a server, a static IP address on the network will be very useful. Setting the IP address of a Virtual Machine is surprisingly simple, or at least it is in my case.

You set the IP you want manually as done here, and to configure the VM you set the network to be attached to a bridged adapter as seen here:

To install citadel, run the following commands per the citadel install guide.

</p>

<pre>apt-get update
apt-get install build-essential curl g++ gettext shared-mime-info libssl-dev
curl http://easyinstall.citadel.org/install | bash</pre>
<p style="text-align: left;">

And the install should go off without a hitch. You can then navigate to yourserverip/mail to access citadel.

Server Upgrade | Stress Testing

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So I wrote a program that makes really big numbers in python in an attempt to break a VM. Here’s the code:

number = 2
count = 0
while 1:
 number = number*number
 count = count + 1
 print str(count) + ' Compounds , ' + str(len(str(number))) + ' Digits'

I left it on for a few days and ended up with this:

Someone try and beat 26 compounds!