Pi4 Server for The Portable Hybrid Local Area Network (PHLAN)

[ HOME ] [ About ] [Hardware] [Software] [ Downloads ] [ Links ]

By Francois Gurin <matrix@shot.org>

About the Pi4 PHLAN server

Why the Pi4

The Raspberry Pi in general is a great hardware platform for a quick DIY project. The Pi4 in particular offers a nice balance of performance and size. It's just small enough to fit anywhere and just powerful enough to run some beefy servives including some real time transcoding in Plex. There is also a huge community out there that supports the Pi both as hardwaree and software.

The hardware

Pi 4 (I used a 4gb, but any will do)
PiJuice HAT

shares a footprint with the Pi
one of the few power solutions that can charge over GPIO (so you can use the Pi's port)
stock 1850mah battery, but can handle an external battery pack easily enough

Neo One case

Provides good passive heat dissipation
Just barely manages to hold the PiJuice within the HAT compartment

512gb MicroSD Card (you can go smaller or larger, up to you)

The Software

I always start with a fresh Raspbian installation. Regardless of the size of your microSD card, I recommend keeping a fairly small partition (I typically use 32GB) for the OS and partition the rest as an NTFS data volume. NTFS is decently supported under Linux these days, supports symbolic links, and can be mounted easily enough under Windows for quick access to files. If you do this, be sure to add a matching line to /etc/fstab so it is automatically mounted on boot. On the data volume I will typically have my on the go collection of music, video, ebooks, and other files I'm using.

After basic configuration including the software for the PiJuice, I activate a number of services. I've listed some out below -- some will have detailed steps for the benefit of myself and others, others will just be bullets of what was enabled. Feel free to contact me if you need any help or have any advice.

PiJuice Software
Retropie

On the occasion when I want to plug this into a monitor or TV, Retropie and emulationstation provide a convenient GUI

PIXEL Desktop

installed under retropie-setup, launched from the ports menu

samba

I have both public shares and private shares for quick access to my files over the network

Apache with mod_dav

Simple pages linking to running web-based services -- I have avahi running, but like to have thinkgs available
webdav isn't a requirement, but some things JustWork(tm) better with it around, and it's easy enough
I've used Apache forever and am comfortable with it's configuration, but you can use anything

autossh

I've setup autossh to manage some reverse tunnels to allow access to some services from behind heavily natted and firewalled environments

Plex Media Server
dispmanx-vnc

provides vnc access to both emulationstation in retropie and the pixel desktop

portainer

easily manage docker containers, not required but handy at times

Downloads

[Coming Soon]

Links

[Coming Soon]