Raspberry π

On the earlier Pis the USB and ethernet shared the same controller so neither were particularly fast when using ethernet and USB at the same time (like a server).

yeah, but, nah. What I have works for $0. I'll stick

edit: (in reply to gigabit ethernet adapter suggestion)

On the earlier Pis the USB and ethernet shared the same controller

This is a PI3. Should be ok?

Anyone using a Pi to control home central heating?

Don't know. I know it was the case with the early ones, don't know if later ones changed or not

Now I am having lots of fun (!) migrating off NOOBS to a plain Raspbian image, whilst also shifting from SD to USB.

All to try to make it easier to backup (2 partitions instead of loads, easier to shrink partition for target cards) and be more reliable (USB flash drive is faster and more resiliant than SD card, I'm told).

Hell yeah, what could possibly go wrong?

I think USB 2 is a bottleneck for 1Gb/s interface. I think π3 has nominally gigabit nic, but I've seen something like 230Mb/s max.

Oh that's a good idea with USB flash drive.

All on one pi?

I've got hassbian running on a 3b+, and I'm planning on putting pihole onto a pi zero

It make sense to have a unifi controller on the 3b+ - and that would mean my HA unifi component would actually work too

DNS and DHCP is all taken care of by an Edgemax router (where I should, at some point, sort out proper virtual networks and gateways). I'm still trying to figure out how to have the router,more a picture, actually as a ssh tunnel / vpn

Do you run an MQTT broker for HA?

Yep it's all in one pi at the moment. CPU isn't stretched and there isn't much IO to worry about.

(At least there isn't now that I have fixed a slight issue: I had neglected to connect my living room ethernet switch to the router, so the TV and Sonos x 2 were accessing the net by bridging across ethernet to wlan on the PI, which was on the same switch. Ooops)

I don't currently have an mqtt broker installed.

Next step is an nginx reverse proxy install so I don't have to remember port numbers for my Unifi controller, HA dashboard etc etc

BTW the migration from NOOBS on SD to standard raspbian on USB has not gone well. I am on attempt three right now.

Not helping that it takes 2 hrs to rsync the filesystem across from SD to USB, each time.

If I get any IO intensive use cases like PLEX then I'll get a new PI.

At the moment, I am not gonna Plex as my TV has no client.

,more a picture,

what does this mean?

At the moment, I am not gonna Plex as my TV has no client.

You could use a raspberry pi ...

OMG u don't know?

*shockedface*

Predictive text and swipe typing on a mobile at midnight is my best bet.

I have no idea what it means - I was trying to write that I am trying to figure out how to set up a tunnel on the network, rather than running it from my laptop.

So, many rabbit holes later and I have achieved something I didn't set out to do in the first place.

Whilst mucking about with partitions and image files and what not, I decided it would be useful to have a Ubuntu live USB stick. Made one and booted it up on my Surface Pro 3. I liked it.

Me: "I wonder if I can install a Linux on the Micro Sd card slot that this SP3 has?"

99% of the internet and Microsoft: "You can't boot from the Micro SD card slot."

Me: "Hold my beer."

I now have GRUB on the MBR of the SP3, allowing me to boot to Windows 10, full Ubuntu 18 desktop or a very lightweight Debian 9.

The linux distros are on the MicroSD card, Windows 10 was unaffected by the whole thing.

Noice.

I suppose I should wander over to the Linux thread now.

I didn't manage to sort out my NOOBS partitions, mind. Oh well, I can just back them up as they are.

"is this a technical problem? How much satisfaction will I get from solving it? And the business need? Oh"

It all went a bit to shit at 2am last night when the SP3 unceremoniously ran out of battery at 85% Debian install completion.

Faaaaark

To use your PI as VPN gateway:

https://www.instructables.com/id/Raspberry-Pi-VPN-Gateway/

I would like to try this too. I would then like my dnsmasq server to set the outbound VPN as default gateway for specific machines on the home network. (The NAS box with a web-based torrent client on it, for a start - I got a copyright notice email from Virgin Media the other day when I did a trial of it by torrenting a copy of Top Gun. Ooops.)

It would also be super neat to have a switch somewhere that would flick all Netflix access from my home network to a US VPN connection when I want to watch Yank Netflix.

How did you manage this then? This would be useful on my SP4

It was surprisingly easy.

But, if you don't understand disk partitions, boot records and the like, it may be a bit ambitious.

If you are up for it:

Put Ubuntu live into a USB stick, in Windows, using Rufus to write the ISO image to the stick. Ensure you use GPT boot option with the UEFI (no CMS) extra option.

Then turn off the SP4 and restart it whilst holding down the volume key. This should boot into the USB stick. From there there is a boot option to install Ubuntu rather than do a live instance boot.

Go through the install and setup your partitions manually, onto the micro SD card. I did a very naive install with a single 12gb partition that mounts at /

Make sure you are installing to the Micro SD card.

(I didn't bother with a swap file. I hope not to run out of RAM. Having said that, I will probably get a new, larger, faster micro SD card and shift it all on to there. Then I can sort out some swap space and some more intricate partitions.)

When the install finishes, it should have written Grub to the MBR and noticed your Windows partition, which it will offer you up on boot.

A few things are required to tidy up:

Use your new Ubuntu OS to run grub-customizer and make your Grub boot menu pretty and default to start windows after a few seconds (so that your less techy family and friends are not bamboozled)

Turn off Fast Boot on your Windows OS. If you don't, you can't shutdown Windows anymore. (YMMV)

It all got a bit more tricky when I installed Debian, since it wrote Grub2 to the MBR which the SP3 wouldn't run without turning off the secure boot in the BIOS. Meh. Cue jiggery pokery with having to re install Grub from the Ubuntu OS onto the MBR, before resecuring the boot process.

Hmm okay. I like the fast booting on the Surface and basically never shut the thing down properly - I use it like a glorified tablet. I'm not sure it's worth losing that in order to get Linux on there... I do feel it's getting a bit sluggish though and a pared down Linux OS might be nicer to run. Any issues with the hardware - keyboard/touch screen drivers missing or whatever, etc? That's usually my stumbling block with Linux installs

I may or may not try it for something to do over Christmas - thanks for taking the time to write out the instructions