Raspberry Pi

I am considering getting a Raspberry Pi, as a small general purpose server at home (maybe do some home automation and run a controller for my local network, possibly in docker containers).
What OS would you guys recommend? Ubuntu server?

It would depend on your actual needs. For a server I want stability as it needs to run for quite some time and not break down because of an update, or a mismatch in library versions making a mess of things, which has happened to me in Ubuntu. For me Debian would fulfill that need. However that stability comes at the cost of not having any bleeding edge software and usually not the latest version of software as for software to be included in Debian, it needs to be running actively for several months, without issues before it is included. The exception to that being security patches. It also promises to be multi architecture for a very long time.

If you do want to have access to the latest version of whatever, Ubuntu Server is probably more interesting, although more bloated than Debian.

I don't have experience with other Server software, but if you are planning to run everything using Docker images, I suppose it doesn't make that much of an issue anymore and you just can go with what you have experience with.

I am not running our server on Raspberry Pi, as the set-up is too complicated for that, but if I would go with a Raspberry Pi as a server, I would run it with the OS on an SSD drive and not on the memory card. Especially if it is a general purpose server.

Maybe it depends on the model of Raspberry Pi too.

Given the generally limited memory, I would expect a very specific server setup, even more if you intend to use containers. A Debian would indeed help in that regard, but I don't know if there's an existing distro targeting that CPU and platform, or if you have to do the work yourself.

Have you looked at DietPi? Or Alpine? (I've only used Alpine in containers to do tests, not as main OS, but that's what sprung to mind in that case).

EDIT: There are more recent releases of DietPi than what Distrowatch shows, they're actually monthly releases. I'm tempted to try it out, it seems very neat, easily customizable and has a good support for the usual packages, including MariaDB, a recent Python 3, Docker, Apache, Lighttpd and so on.

I would use a Raspberry pi specific distro like Raspbian (debian-based).
https://www.raspbian.org/

That said, for home use I consider Ubuntu LTS also safe and stable enough.

Thanks for the feedback!

I was actually looking at the Home Assistant OS, as its main purpose would be running Home Assistant. I read that you lose some functionality if you run that in a docker, so maybe that's the easiest option. I believe it also supports Portainer so I could still run other stuff, like my network controller, in a docker.

Myrthos said:

I am not running our server on Raspberry Pi, as the set-up is too complicated for that, but if I would go with a Raspberry Pi as a server, I would run it with the OS on an SSD drive and not on the memory card. Especially if it is a general purpose server.

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Yeah, the HA OS is optimized (as would be the Raspberry specific OS's I imagine) to limit the writes to the storage, so not sure how much of an issue it is... But I think you can also use a USB stick instead of an SD. I agree that the SSD is probably the best option though, but if I can backup regularly I don't see too much of an issue using a less stable storage medium.

Redglyph said:

Maybe it depends on the model of Raspberry Pi too.

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I'm looking at getting a Raspberry Pi 4, either the 4 or 8 GB version, but ha... zero availability worldwide.

You mentioned "general purpose server", which is why I mentioned an SSD would work much better for that purpose, given that general purpose could mean anything, like a lot more disk I/O access

As to the Raspberry 4, the best option now is to get a used one via eBay, or Marktplaats, or whatever else is available in Belgium.
Demand is high though, so they are probably offered for about the same or higher price than a new one would.

Myrthos said:

You mentioned "general purpose server", which is why I mentioned an SSD would work much better for that purpose, given that general purpose could mean anything, like a lot more disk I/O access

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Indeed, sorry, my bad. I already have a NAS for file storage and media streaming, I'd use the Pi to run some "general" services (or that's how I'd call 'm at least).

Myrthos said:

As to the Raspberry 4, the best option now is to get a used one via eBay, or Marktplaats, or whatever else is available in Belgium.
Demand is high though, so they are probably offered for about the same or higher price than a new one would.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I feel like whatever's available there will just have scalper prices, but I can check. I've been keeping an eye on this website but so far no luck: https://rpilocator.com/

Yes, it's not yet back to normal, I see. RS-online Benelux mentions new availabilities around mid-April (ex with the 4-GB model) but who knows if that's true.

I made a quick test with DietPi and it worked well, no issue. I have a model 3 B+, so I used the ARMv8 64-bit version. The image is about 850 MB with a boot and a root partition, I used Gparted to extend the 2nd to the capacity of the SD card.

There's a software selection at the initial configuration to add Docker, web servers and so on, or to select a desktop environment among a few common ones. There's a configuration script for the hardware and software as well (even with T° and overclocking management). Both can be run any time after the installation. All that can be pre-set in a configuration file for easy re-installation.

I haven't done much testing though, at some point I'll try to setup a simple Django website and see how it fares. Idle in text mode, it was using ~150 MB of memory with SSH, Lighttpd, an FTP server and MariaDB activated.

The configuration must be reviewed, it allows for ex. root login with SSH or FTP. But that's classic post-installation checks. Default user is root too, I suppose it's standard on Raspberry Pi.

The small gripe I have with them is the lack of clear versioning (DistroWatch gave up on maintaining info on them because of that). But it's really not a big deal once it's installed, since updating is easy.

EDIT: nice site, the rpilocator

Those Raspberry Pi's are awesome! Since I messed a little with NGINX on a Linux VM, I decided to put all that on the Raspberry with the DietPi OS… and it just works.

It was actually very easy to do, much more so than initially configuring that nasty NGINX. Hosting several apps in the same domain (localhost for me) is a real pain, Apache is much easier for that.

So now, this little guy can be plugged into the network and be used as a nice wiki to take notes, that's very handy. I used dokuwiki which doesn't need any database server, it's easy and has many useful features. I had tried to find a good editor to keep notes on different subjects (configuration info and general tips, things to remember and so on), but hadn't found anything satisfactory, this does it and it can be accessed from any device.

I was expecting a lot of differences with Linux, like busybox, a custom service system, hard-to-install software and all that. But no, it has the GNU commands, systemd and software can be installed with apt (which is slow, I suspect their ARM repository doesn't have servers as powerful as other distros - maybe they run on Raspberries too, hehe) or their own text-based UI.


In conclusion, I haven't tried the default Raspbian to compare, but DietPi seems pretty good to me. I'll see how it copes with updates and stability after a while.

PS: I just hope the heat sink is enough when it's used more intensively...

Nice to hear.

I did finally manage to nab a Raspberry Pi 4 model B (4 gb) last month or so, but erroneously ordered the default Raspberry case with it. After reading about how hot the Pi gets in there and pouring over so many reviews of cases, I got a another one and settled on the Argon ONE case (full HDMI ports, yeah man).

So yeah, I installed it in the case and set it on my desk, and that's where it's still sitting, waiting until I have time (and am in the mood) to play with it more. I figured I'd keep it easy on myself and just install the HomeAssistant OS on it (since that's what I was intending to use it for).

Yes, it seems the component shortage is finally subsiding. Now it's more a gas and oil shortage problem for us… :lol:

This case looks very neat, it seems it has a fan? I suppose that's why you chose that over the previous one.

Have fun with it!