Sunday, June 24, 2012

Raspberry Pi

This seemed as good a place as any to talk about my Raspberry Pi experiences. The Raspberry Pi, is a very low cost ($US30) computer the size of a credit card that has been promoted as a educational tool for the new generation of kids growing up in a 'computer world'. The 'raspi' runs Linux and as such is not necessarily a 'plug and play' option (as I am finding out!). Upon receiving the raspi from Element14, I proceeded to download the latest Debian 'squeeze' OS image, and installed it to a 16Gb Class 2 SD card using win32diskimager. After inserting the SD card, connecting cables I started up the raspi without a problem - a standard looking Linux boot up. Logging in as user:pi I tested the X server GUI using startx, which also started without a problem. Great.. what to do now? I have used Linux on and off for probably 20 years, but I am by no means an expert with the OS. I have a general idea how things work, and run http, ftp ssh, telnet etc without issues on another Debian PC. With that in mind I decided to start with what I know and run the usual web server programs. A little digging brought up lighttpd as a suitable lightweight httpd server to dish out web pages. "sudo apt-get lighttpd install" downloads and installs the server without an issue, and after a few moments I could navigate to http://192.168.1.16/ and show the default directory which is /var/www . Next up install an ftpd to enable ftp access to upload pages from my local network. Proftpd I think is a valid choice for an ftp server, and so "sudo apt-get proftpd install" show do the job. And here I run into a little trouble.

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