Raspberry Pi

RaspberryPi System upgrade vs. Fresh install

Recently I noticed that one of my RaspberryPIs was running a rather old version of Raspian. I thought it might be a good idea to upgrade and followed the instructions from Upgrade Raspberry Pi OS to the Latest Version (2024) – RaspberryTips.

How to enable automatic updates on Linux / RaspberryPi

I just noticed that I haven’t logged on to one of my RaspberryPIs for quite a while and also didn’t update it. Instead of hacking some root crontab, a quick search brought this thread in the Raspi forums up: crontab update – Raspberry Pi Forums and unattended upgrades – How do I enable automatic updates? – Ask Ubuntu

To keep the Raspberry Pi updated, I just use the following:

sudo apt install unattended-upgrades apt-listchanges
sudo dpkg-reconfigure -plow unattended-upgrades

Documentation can be found here: Package management | Ubuntu

How to fix: Jellyfin Library Scan Hangs

Just recently I wrote about How to install Jellyfin on a RaspberryPi. It all started promising until – after adding a couple of movies – the Library Scan suddenly hung. Unfortunately I didn’t dig too deep into all kinds of logs (which I certainly forgot but which might have given a hint).

How to fix: Android Connected, No Internet with Pi-Hole

Since quite a while I was running a Pi-Hole DNS server in my network to block ad- & tracking requests for all devices in the network (more info about Pi-hole are on Wikipedia).

All was great until at some time our Android devices suddenly couldn’t connect to the WiFi anymore. They reported “Connected, No Internet“. All other devices, connected via LAN or WiFi were just fine: PCs, FireTV Stick, other PIs – no issues. When I disabled the use of PiHole, they were able to connect again.

How to replace Synology Video Station with Jellyfin

Unfortunately Synology has discontinued their support for Videostation starting from DSM version 7.2.2 as can be read in the Release Notes for DSM | Synology Inc.:

#6 Video Station is not available on DSM 7.2.2. Refer to this article for workarounds to stream videos to end devices.

Time to evaluate the alternatives …

How to make space/storage efficient backups of Raspberry Pi SD-cards

RaspberryPi mini computers are great for all kinds of home automation, media centers, home servers. Yet it should be known that the draw back for permanent operation can be the SD-card. Especially when applications on the RasperrbyPi cause excessive read/writes or if it is used outsides where temperatures can reach the SD-Card operating limits, IO errors should be expected that can just f* up the operating system.

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How to install TvHeadend on a Raspberry Pi

Tvheadend is a TV streaming server and recorder for Linux. It also offers a great possibility to combine a SAT-recorder with KODI mediacenter on a Raspberry Pi (I would recommend a raspberry Pi 3 due to RAM requirements).

Installing Tvheadend by compiling from source was not so easy, so it is definately easier to install via precompiled packages. In order to do so, the following steps are required:

How to enable Camera Streaming on a Raspberry Pi

This is a very brief tutorial how to get a stream of the Raspberry Pi camera into a browser. The original article can be found here.

I was searching a lot how to stream directly from the camera to the network, yet I did not find a solution. So what we are doing here is using the timelaps feature from raspistill combined with MJPG-Streamer. In the end you will be able to see the stream in a webbrowser or in VLC Media Player.

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How to enable WiFi auto reconnect on a Raspberry Pi

In recent times my WiFi seems to have become a bit unstable. As if this wouldn’t be annoying enough, this also means that all my Rasperry Pis loose their WiFi connections as well and thus become unreachable.

Yet the sollution is pretty simple:

Well, there is a very simple solution:

cd /etc/ifplugd/action.d/
sudo mv ifupdown ifupdown.original
sudo cp /etc/wpa_supplicant/ifupdown.sh ./ifupdown
sudo reboot

That’s it. Thanks Stackexchange for the great hit.

RaspberryPi Desktop Sharing via VNC

The problem: Raspberry connected to a TV / share the desktop

When connecting a RapsberryPi to a screen or TV to show something you surely would like to remote control the RasPi not only via shell (SSH) but also via VNC to see exactly what is displayed on the remote screen. So what we are looking for is not “a new remote desktop” (as provided by a lot of tools) but “desktop sharing”. And of course you want the desktop shared automatically when the Raspberry Pi boots.

Yet thanks to the great and large Rapsberry Pi community, this is a pretty easy task – if you know how to do it …
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