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Category: Raspberry

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Created: 06 February 2023

Last Updated: 23 July 2023

Hits: 3113

PiShrink is a useful tool to compress backups created with win32diskimager and other windows tools as a full backup to reduce them to a minimum size.

It's a hack and works a lot of time. Unfortunatey there are a lot of situations you get an ugly error message which are created because of missing checks in the code.

Read more: PiShrink is just a hack

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Category: Raspberry

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Created: 19 November 2022

Last Updated: 19 November 2022

Hits: 1896

• raspberry
• argon

User Rating: 5 / 5

Unfortunately you need a USB A to USB A male cable which is very unusual. But there's a trick:  Remove the lower part of the case which includes the SSD and pug in the USB bridge of the Argon case. Now you can use a commonly used USB extension cable to connect the SDD to your PC. Now use any common methods to install an OS on your SSD.

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Category: Raspberry

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Created: 26 August 2022

Last Updated: 26 August 2022

Hits: 2731

• raspberry
• password
• headless
• userid

RaspbianOS does not create standard user pi with standard password raspberry any mor. That's good, During first boot you have to define the user and it's password now. If you setup your Raspberries headless you now have an issue.

Read more: Headless setup of RaspbianOS with user and password

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Category: Raspberry

Created: 12 June 2022

Last Updated: 18 April 2024

Hits: 18139

• raspberry
• CM4
• compute module

User Rating: 5 / 5

I recently got a compute module 4 (CM4) donated to add support for NVMe in raspiBackup (See here for details). I'm used to use a Raspberry but never used a CM4 before so I had to ramp up on CM4 first. The following page describes how I managed to get a RaspbianOS (Buster) up and running on the CM4 and to boot from NVMe.

My CM4 specs: 1GB main memory, 32GB eMMC and 128GB NVMe from Hynix, no WiFi and a Waveshare Mini Base Board A (CM4-IO-BASE-A)

Parts

Hynix NVMe, CM4 and Waveshare Mini Base Board A (from top to bottom)

Parts assembled

Read more: Raspberry Compute Module 4 (CM4) setup guide on eMMC and NVMe

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Category: Raspberry

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Created: 12 January 2020

Last Updated: 10 May 2023

Hits: 4891

• raspberry
• mobile
• umts
• gammu

Following page describes how to use a ZTE ML190 USB drive to receive SMS and forward them to another mobile phone number. But you can also send the SMS in an eMail or do other stuff. You can control any devices at home, i.e. turn on or turn off some device, open and close your garage and much more.

Update 5/2/2023

gammu requires Pyhon2 and will not be migrated to Python3. Therefore I now use smstools. Sample event handler smsevent includes a lot of sample code which only has to be adapted to the specific requirements.

Read more: Use ZTE ML190 USB pen drive to create a SMS relay server

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Category: Raspberry

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Created: 20 September 2019

Last Updated: 22 April 2022

Hits: 7313

• raspberry
• synology

User Rating: 5 / 5

Synology offers Hyper Backup to backup your system- and application configuration and data for a worst case scenario. You should use external storage and can use a Raspberry which runs a rsync server. The initial backup takes quite long (multiple days) but all subsequent backups will take approx 1 hour.

Read more: Backup your Synology via Hyper Backup on a Raspberry

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Category: Raspberry

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Created: 24 July 2019

Last Updated: 22 October 2022

Hits: 6816

• raspberry

User Rating: 5 / 5

We now have a new Raspberry4 gibt, which in contrast to the previous versions becomes quite hot. So everybody is interested in the effectiveness of either passive or active cooling and whether this cooling suppresses CPU throtteling.

I wrote a small script check_throttled.sh which reads the current throttling states of the Raspberry with vcgencmd get_throttled and if throtteling happens or already happend the meaning of the throttling bits is reported.

Read more: How to test the CPU temperature of my Raspberry and check whether the CPU speed was throttled ?

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Category: Raspberry

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Created: 22 December 2017

Last Updated: 22 April 2022

Hits: 4117

At home there are usually a lot of devices using the internet. Unwanted advertisments Unerwünschte Werbung kann man mit diversen Browserplugins in einem can be suppressed with browser plugins but this requires to install a pugin on every device - multiple tablets, multiple smartphones, multiple laptops and multiple desktops.

Read more: Smart AdBlocker for local network: Block unwanted advertising with pihole

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Category: Raspberry

Created: 09 December 2017

Last Updated: 22 October 2022

Hits: 17395

• raspberry

User Rating: 2 / 5

Everybody running a server on a Raspberry with an open internet connection should protect against unauthorized access. There are various ways to protect. An additional protection is to restrict access to the Raspberry to specific IP ranges. The easiest way to do this is by using geoip and iptables and allow access from IPs from your country only. Actually this makes sense only if the server is used by you only and is no open server for everybody (owncloud, seafile, ...).

Execute following steps in order to install geoip on Raspbian Buster

Buster now uses nsf instead of iptables and requires a different format of the geoip files.

1) install xtables-addon

sudo apt install xtables-addons-common libnet-cidr-lite-perl libtext-csv-xs-perl libgeoip2-perl

2) Enable xt_geoip

sudo modprobe xt_geoip

echo "xt_geoip" | sudo tee -a /etc/modules-load.d/modules.conf

3) Download geoip files

mkdir /tmp/geoip

cd /tmp/geoip

/usr/lib/xtables-addons/xt_geoip_dl

4) Build geoip database now

mkdir -P /usr/share/xt_geoip
cd GeoLite2-Country-CSV_20190709
sudo /usr/lib/xtables-addons/xt_geoip_build -D /usr/share/xt_geoip

5) Add iptables rules to accept IPs from US and Germany

Example:

iptables -A INPUT -m geoip --src-cc DE,US -m conntrack --ctstate NEW -j ACCEPT

6) Create following script to update your geoip database on a regular base

#!/bin/bash
geotmpdir=$(mktemp -d)
OLDPWD="${PWD}"
cd "${geotmpdir}"
/usr/lib/xtables-addons/xt_geoip_dl
dir="$(ls)"
cd $dir
/usr/lib/xtables-addons/xt_geoip_build -D /usr/share/xt_geoip 
cd "${OLDPWD}"
rm -r "${geotmpdir}"

Execute following steps in order to install geoip on Raspbian Stretch

1) Install the xtables-addons

sudo apt-get install raspberrypi-kernel-headers

wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/xtables-addons/Xtables-addons/xtables-addons-2.14.tar.xz
tar xf xtables-addons-2.14.tar.xz
cd xtables-addons-2.14
./configure
make
make install

or

Kudos to @Basti

You can also use DKMS to build this module. Place source to /usr/src/xtables-addons-2.14 for example and create a dkms.conf in there. I have used the file shipped with xtables-addons-dkms_2.12-0.1_all.deb and edit the PACKAGE_VERSION="2.14" and
DEST_MODULE_LOCATION[0]="/extra". More infos about dkms (https://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/DKMS/).

2) Create a file /usr/local/bin/installGeoIP.sh and insert following code

#!/bin/bash
set -euo pipefail

set +e
if ! dpkg -l xtables-addons-common >/dev/null ; then
        apt install xtables-addons-common
fi
if ! dpkg -l libtext-csv-xs-perl >/dev/null ; then
        apt install libtext-csv-xs-perl
fi
set -e

if [ ! -d /usr/share/xt_geoip ]; then
        mkdir /usr/share/xt_geoip
fi

geotmpdir=$(mktemp -d)
csv_files="${geotmpdir}/GeoIPCountryWhois.csv ${geotmpdir}/GeoIPv6.csv"
OLDPWD="${PWD}"
cd "${geotmpdir}"
/usr/lib/xtables-addons/xt_geoip_dl
/usr/lib/xtables-addons/xt_geoip_build -D /usr/share/xt_geoip ${csv_files}
cd "${OLDPWD}"
rm -r "${geotmpdir}"
exit 0

3) Make this file executable and invoke it

chmod +x /usr/local/bin/installGeoIP.sh

installGeoIP.sh

4) Add iptables rules to accept IPs from US and Germany

Example:

iptables -A INPUT -m geoip --src-cc DE,US -m conntrack --ctstate NEW -j ACCEPT

Issues

If you get iptables: No chain/target/match by that name. error messages test whether the xtables_addons are installed correctly

modprobe -c | grep x_tab

should display a long list of modules.

modprobe xt_geoip

Should succeed.

depmod -a

may also help to fix the issue.

References

Maxmind geoip

Linoxide: Block IP from countries using Geoip

Netfilter: geoip howto

Xtables-addons (source code)

Blocklist ipsets

How to install kernel headers

Linxu headers rpi from mhieenka
Solved: iptables & geoip

rpi-source wiki

Alternative: ipset usage (German)

Reddit: Firewall with geoIP capability on Debian 10

Sourceforge: XTables-addons

nft-blacklist

 asds

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Category: Raspberry

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Created: 12 October 2017

Last Updated: 22 April 2022

Hits: 5216

• raspberry
• noobs

User Rating: 5 / 5

Every Raspberry beginner starts with a NOOBS image, which is listed by raspberry.org first as the suggested image to use (See https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/)

NOOBS allows to start different operating systems which is useful when you want to evaluate the different alternatives to decide which is the right one for you. Unfortunately most of the people continue to use NOOBS when they have decided which OS to use. But that's the point to setup a new image with only one operating system.

Why?

NOOBS is no normal Linux system and has various quirks which causes a lot of headache sooner or later. If you ask for help if you have issues with NOOBS there is low probability you will get any responses. All experienced Raspberry users don't use NOOBS. As soon as you have decided which OS to use setup a new image and don't use NOOBS any more. This will make your life much easier when using your Raspberry.

raspiBackup supports NOOBS images in partitionorientierted backupmode . For production like systems it's suggested to create a single operating system image and backup this with raspiBackup in normal backup mode. the normal backup mode is also able to save an external root partition.