Hiya!

I have a Raspberry Pi 4B set up as a print server, so it has to run 24/7. But it irks me that it’s mostly idling.

I’d move my website to it, but I don’t want to deal with it being open to the internet. The same goes for an e-mail server.

I was also thinking of running a Minecraft server on it. (Being able to play on the same world from different devices is kinda cool.) Alas, my RPi only has 4 GiBs of RAM. I worry that such a load would interfere with the print server.

Any ideas what I could run on it?

    • b72@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      16
      ·
      11 days ago

      Another vote for Pi-hole here. I don’t know how I lived without it before!

      • toman@lemmy.zipOP
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        11 days ago

        I use an adblocker on both my PC and my phone. Does a Pi-hole have many advantages over that?

        • thejml@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          16
          ·
          11 days ago

          PiHole is DNS based ad blocking and local DNS for everything on your network. So, even things that can’t run their own adblocker.

          • toman@lemmy.zipOP
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            4
            ·
            11 days ago

            So it can block ads in Google Chrome on my moms phone? Then I’ll have to figure out how to set it up!

            Do you often run into issues when blocking traffic like this? I can imagine some software (i.e. Samsung’s or Google’s bloatware) kicking up a fuss.

            • thejml@sh.itjust.works
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              4
              ·
              11 days ago

              Sometimes I’ve found a site that gets partially blocked and causes a fuss. There’s an option to allowlist domain(s).

              Also, some sites try to use ad domains to serve legit traffic, and some use legit domains to serve ads, so it’s not perfect, but it works pretty darn well overall.

            • slacktoid@lemmy.ml
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              3
              ·
              11 days ago

              Depends on the level of block lists you add. The defaults are pretty sane and it doesn’t need any configuration, you configure your router to use it

        • b72@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          11 days ago

          One major advantage is that on the domestic TV channels here in the UK which have ad breaks (essentially all of them except the BBC) it removes the ads altogether and the programmes run seamlessly from the part before the ad break into the part after. I still smile every time it happens!

            • b72@lemmy.ml
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              3
              ·
              11 days ago

              Yes, that’s right. It would only work with TV over the internet and not with a digital signal transmitted direct to the TV via aerial.

        • slackness@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          10 days ago

          Running those adblockers on your devices is extremely insecure. They register as a VPN and intercept HTTPS traffic. They decrypt the encrypted traffic, filter it, and encrypt again meaning all your communications are signed by this single app’s certificate. Not to mention any vulnerability would wreak havoc.

          https://grapheneos.org/faq#ad-blocking-apps

      • markstos@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        11 days ago

        Does PiHole ever break a family member’s browsing, and then they don’t know to fix the issue because it would involve understanding opening up the PiHole web interface?

        • b72@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          11 days ago

          Yes, that does sometimes happen but the frequency depends on the blocking list used, or if multiple lists are used. When a family member encounters something like this, I can usually quite quickly identify the relevant blocked item and whitelist it.

            • b72@lemmy.ml
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              10 days ago

              Well, it takes a while longer to fix. The only times it’s happened (perhaps twice in 6 months) it’s been when a family member has been trying to buy something from a website. I can also access the Pi-hole remotely and—in the worst case scenario—just turn off blocking altogether for a short period.

              • markstos@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                10 days ago

                Thanks for sharing.

                It does look like there’s a way to use PiHole personally for those who share the network with those who don’t want it: leave default DNS server setttings alone except for your own devices.

  • grantorinowhiskey@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    11 days ago

    Some great light lightweight apps for a 4GB Pi:

    • Homeassistant
    • Fresh RSS
    • Paperless NGX
    • Syncthing
    • PiHole or Adguard home
    • Syncthing
    • toman@lemmy.zipOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      11 days ago

      I was trying to set up a scan server last week. No luck yet. 😅

      Paperless ngx looks looks amazing. I was actually thinking of finding a solution for this type of thing as pdfgrep was getting kinda slow.

  • wildbus8979@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    edit-2
    11 days ago

    Another vote for a music server. Gonic/Navidrome is pretty low power and super useful!

    Home assistant is another option, but I’ll say that if you’re serious about home automation you’ll quickly outgrow a Pi. It’ll run if you only have a handful of devices though.

    • toman@lemmy.zipOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      11 days ago

      I like the music server idea! Where do you get your music? Many artists don’t even sell CDs nowadays.

      Home assistant is probably not for me. The house I live in is still very analogue. I enjoy not having to debug software when investigating why there’s no hot water.

      • wildbus8979@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        edit-2
        11 days ago

        Plenty of artists still do sell CDs though. I often buy them at the merch stand at shows. Many also sell DRM free digital files on sites like Bandcamp. I also buy a lot of music at the thrift stores and rip them. If all else fails, there’s always the high seas.

        • toman@lemmy.zipOP
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          11 days ago

          Almost every time I look on Bandcamp, the artist I am looking for isn’t there. :( Also, last time I tried buying something there they only accepted PayPal which I stopped using a while ago. But it seems they accept normal card payments now. Neat.

          I buy CDs – I even bought a CD drive to rip them – but international shipping really kills me. I guess brick-and-mortar music shops are still a thing…

      • blayd@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        11 days ago

        Seconding Bandcamp & Qobuz, or ripping CDs. I use fre:ac to get accurate FLACs.

  • boydster@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    11 days ago

    PiHole, PiVPN, maybe a reverse proxy like nginx proxy manager to make connecting to your various web management portals you have an easy way to map it to a human readable url

  • troglodytis@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    11 days ago

    Get yourself and adsb antenna and feed flightaware, flightradar24, and adsbexchange. Help track the skies!

  • pitiable_sandwich540@feddit.org
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    11 days ago

    You could also setup a git repo for your config files. That way you could revert changes, if you break something.

    If you don’t want do open your pi up to the internet you could take a look at tailscale. I use this script on my laptop and home pc to share files with sshfs while having any other traffic go through mullvad. Set this up on your pi with it as an exit node and you basically have access from anywhere.

  • thespcicifcocean@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    11 days ago

    let it run dwarf fortress from within the terminal, then ssh into it from wherever you are so you can play df from anywhere in the world. i did this at work.

  • Brewchin@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    11 days ago

    I run AdGuard Home, WireGuard and a couple of other things on my 4B, all in Docker.

    I used to run HomeAssistant on our for a while, but they stopped supporting that architecture (armhf?). Also used to run Unbound on it.

    • toman@lemmy.zipOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      11 days ago

      Neat idea! If I were that orderly (I’m more of the mindset that what I don’t remember probably wasn’t important), I’d set up a normal website. I enjoy writing HTML by hand.

  • owenfromcanada@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    11 days ago

    I’ve got Jellyfin running on an odroid, and it’s pretty solid.

    Not sure if you’re the type to need access to your home network while away, but I also use a pi zero as my “login gateway”–I forward just port 22 to it from the WAN, and I have ssh set up to only allow logins with a key. I can set up dynamic port forwarding and tunnel through to my home network, and that pi zero has no other function (so even if I screw something else up on another server, I can still access my network).

  • Eugenia@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    11 days ago

    Jellyfin music server. It needs about 1.2 GB of RAM for itself, plus the system.