Hard disk upgrading with Clonezilla

Some time ago my desktop computer welcomed me with an unpleasant message: the main hard drive was likely to fail soon.

When you receive similar messages you never know how soon “soon” means. Since disk drives prices are reasonably low I decided not to waste time, I so bought a new, bigger, hard drive to replace the faulty one.

Upgrading the computer main drive could be a time consuming business if done “by hand” since it means copying all system and user data. Fortunately many tools exist in the Linux world to ease the process, among them Clonezilla.

Clonezilla

Clonezilla is a, very small foot-print, Linux distribution dedicated to disk and partition backup or cloning. I already used it once to backup EEEPC original Xandros installation. I downloaded Clonezilla ISO image and installed it on a SUB disk using Unetbootin. Because of its very small size I’ve been able to install Clonezilla on a old 1GB USB drive.

Before starting Clonezilla Iinstalled the new drive on my desktop PC together with the old one and partitioned it using Gparted.

At boot Clonezilla offer some boot options, I selected the default one

Then, once the system had started, after the long language and keyboard selection menu, I’ve been shown several options. I selected to work in a “device-device” mode then selected the “local partition-to-local partition” copy mode.

I proceeded with copying partition one from the old disk to partition one in the new disk, once completed I repeated with partition two.

At last I powered of the computer, removed the old faulty disk and left the new one in its place. I restarted the system but, the new disk didn’t boot.

After a while I figured I forgot that Clonezilla, when copying partition-by-partition, didn’t copy boot information. Not a big deal, once you understand it.

Eventually I started again the system using Clonezilla and, using command line interface, I installed GRUB on the new disk.

sudo mkdir /mnt/ubuntu
sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/ubuntu
sudo grub-install --boot-directory=/mnt/ubuntu/boot /dev/sda

After this my computer started, working like before.

By the Way now I have a unreliable spare 500 GB hard disk, what could I use it for?

The joy of virtualization: Docker

I took a relative pause from experimenting with Raspberry Pi to report my first experiences with something completely different. One of the first things you realize while programming server-side is how your program is only one piece of a bigger puzzle. Your application usually runs inside a container, connects to a database, expose or consume services and so on ... Solving this puzzle means defining an installation procedure that becomes different and sometime more complex by changing or scaling the installation target.

Docker

Docker is an container platform that overcomes the installation problems by producing a ready-to-install standardized operating-system-level virtual machine, packed with everything your application needs to be run. Unlike other virtualization solutions a Docker image only contains what your application needs without having to install and run a full hardware simulation like, for example, in Virtual Box.

Installation

Docker is available in two versions a professional “enterprise” edition and a community one (Docker CE) free to download. Installing Docker CE on Ubuntu is just matter of adding Docker repository address

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl software-properties-common

curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo apt-key add -

sudo apt-key fingerprint 0EBFCD88

sudo add-apt-repository "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu $(lsb_release -cs) stable"

Then installing it using the usual apt command

sudo apt-get updatesudo apt-get install docker-ce

Once the installation completed the current user, or any user who will use Docker, must be added to the “docker” group.

sudo adduser maxx docker

After logging out and in again Docker was ready for use and command

docker info

Correctly reported the empty environment initial state

First run

In order to test Docker is correctly installed and running a simple “hello-world” image is available. Just by calling the command:

docker run hello-world

Docker take care of downloading the image from its repository, installing and running it.

Another interesting image to start with is, as suggested in hello-world printout, the “ubuntu” image that installs and starts a console-only Ubuntu virtual machine with no effort.

Remotely controlling the Raspberry Pi Zero and Pi Camera

Here I am continuing my very slow paced building of a Raspberry Pi Zero based camera. After experimenting with raspberry-desktop file exchanging I’ve now took some time experimenting with remote controlling options. I’ll eventually have to wire to the Raspberry some, at least minimal, physical interface, but remote control, trough a Android smart-phone, could be a viable solution to avoid a too complex hardware interface.

The ready-made solution: Raspicam Remote

The first solution I found in Android Play store has been Raspicam Remote. Raspicam is a quite simple application providing a simple but complete user interface and connecting to the Raspberry Pi using Wi-Fi and SSH.

Unfortunately Raspicam doesn’t work on my old phone (Jelly bean) but it works fine in my much newer tablet. I understand you can’t keep backwards compatibility with everything. Other solutions are available but they look more suited for remote surveillance than camera interface.

The mostly Do-it-yourself solution: BlueDot

Interfacing to the Raspberry trough Wi-Fi offers clear advantages a specially in terms of connection speed but also poses some disadvantage. Setting-up a Wi-Fi connection might be trivial while at home where is available an already configured access point but it’s not the same while outside. Connecting the Raspberry with a smart-phone using Wi-Fi means configuring one of them to act as access-point, its not difficult but it might become tricky. Also on the power consumption aspect must be kept in consideration especially for the device acting as access-point.

Bluetooth overcomes both set-up and power consumption problems in exchange, of course, for transfer speed and connection range.

Here comes to play BlueDot: a simple looking Android application that together with a easy to use Python library allows a unidirectional Bluetooth communication between smart-phone and a Raspberry device.

New toy on the desk: Raspberry PI zero W and Raspberry Camera

Just before Christmas I have been to an electronics and surplus fair where I bought myself, among other things, a new Raspberry family “thing”. I started with a vague idea of building my very own “hackable” camera. I didn't have, and still don't, have a definitive idea of how it must be or what to do with it ... just it must be hackable i.e. I must be able to reprogram it once I need it for something else. I so bought a Raspberry Pi Zero kit, including the official withe-red case heath sink and male pin strip, and a 8 M pixel Pi Camera.

Headless installation

I'm getting quite used to prepare and install Raspberry Pi images, it's the fourth time, almost always headless. Plenty of tutorials can be found on the Internet by the way. This time is not very different apart from just one detail: I had to configure the Raspberry to connect to WIFI network from the very beginning.

So after copying the latest Raspbian image on the micro-SD card withe the usual “dd” command

sudo dd if=2017-11-29-raspbian-stretch-lite.img of=/dev/sdd

I configured Raspbian to enable SSH by default

sudo touch /media/maxx/boot/ssh

Then on the same root directory I created a “wpa_supplicant” WIFI configuration file

sudo vim.tiny /media/maxx/boot/wpa_supplicant.conf

Where I wrote down my wireless network configuration

country=ITctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdevupdate_config=1
network={ssid="WIFI"psk="secret"}

At last I powered the Raspberry Pi and scanned the WIFI network for the new entry computer.

I connected trough SSH and I went, of course, trough the usual post-installation operations like changing the Pi user password and expanding the file system to the full micro-SD extent.

Pi Camera installation

Once I verified the Raspberry was correctly working I powered it back down and connected the Pi Camera using the small flat cable also included in the Pi-Zero kit I bought.

Backing-up the Raspberry Pi 3

Recently I had to repeat installation of my Raspberry Pi 3 server. Probably because of some SD card corruption problem I started experiencing unexpected loss of active services, first GitLab then MiniDLNA, a and failures while trying reinstalling or reconfiguring them. I so downloaded latest Raspbian image and went with a complete installation. Not a big deal, since I’ve been following my own instructions on this blog but still a time consuming process.

Once the Raspberry server was operative again I started looking for a simple backup solution in the case something broke again by itself or, not unlikely, I broke something by myself.

I quickly found in the Internet this discussion page where, among other solutions, it was proposed a handy shell script to completely backup Raspberry SD Card. Following discussion links I landed on this GitHub page where the same script is available in its latest version.

Installation

Installing the script is just matter of downloading and unzipping it or, as alternative, cloning it with git command. I did choose the latter since I’m going to need git in future.

sudo apt-get install gitmkdir scriptcd script/git clone https://github.com/aweijnitz/pi_backup.git

configuring the script

The PI backup script is a fine example of shell programming, it needs only a couple of arrangements to fit the system where is installed.

First functions stopServices() and startServices must be edited by uncommenting commands to stop and start services running on the Raspberry. I added command to stop and start MiniDLNA service:

...sudo service minidlna stop...sudo service minidlna start...

Then I edited the backup path. In the same scrip section it’s possible to set the number of old backups to keep and if backed-up images must be compressed.

...# Setting up directoriesSUBDIR=backupMOUNTPOINT=/media/usbdiskDIR=$MOUNTPOINT/$SUBDIRRETENTIONPERIOD=1 # days to keep old backupsPOSTPROCESS=0 # 1 to use a postProcessSucess function after successfull backupGZIP=0 # whether to gzip the backup or not...

KODI on RetroPie (and Raspberry Pi)

I’m not what you’d call a hard gamer ... probably I’m not a gamer at all. So after a little playing with RetroPie, and the few ROM files I managed to find, I continued with experimenting with available RetroPie “ports”.

RetroPie ports are a plug-in system that usually allow you to add open source games or additional emulation engine to RetroPie interface. The “KODI” port instead allow you to install and start from RetroPie interface a full featured media manager giving your retro-computing machine an effective “double life”.

KODI Media Manager

KODI, previously known as XBMC is a media manager software available for various Linux flavours. On the Raspberry it's available both as installation package and as stand alone distribution. KODI is of course capable of playing music and video both stored locally on a remote DLNA source. In addition KODI allows installing a great variety of add-on modules to display, for example, YouTube videos or whether news.

Installing KODI “port”

KODI can be installed and integrated with RetroPie interface from RetroPie set-up script.

sudo RetroPie-Setup/retropie_setup.sh

I selected the “Manage packages” menu, then the “Optional packages” one at last I selected “KODI” package in packages list.

Then the installation script started and I only hat to patiently wait its conclusion.

Installing RetroPie (on the Raspberry Pi B+)

Just after I installed the Raspberry Pi 3 as home server I promised myself I would have destined the old board to more “experimental” experiences. As soon as I got some fee time I so decided to explore Raspberry gaming capabilities. I'm far from being a gamer today but I spent some time playing computer games when I was younger, during the “Commodore Amiga age”.

RetroPie

RetroPie is a Raspberry Pi distribution, based on Raspbian, specialised on making the Raspberry a full featured gaming machine. RetroPie image is provided with a great variety of emulation software, a graphics user interface, gaming control support and a configuration program to setup most of its options without the need of keyboard and mouse. Among its features RetroPie allows to download and install optional modules supporting things like media server software and open source games.

Parts list

Before starting to install I collected the required hardware: The Raspberry Pi, of course, a 8GB USB disk I had available, a wireless USB adapter I already used with the Raspberry and a cheap wireless keyboard I bought during a surplus fair. Last but not least by bedroom TV was going to be used as monitor. The wireless keyboard has been the only thing I bought with this project in mind.

GitLab on the Raspberry Pi 3

Software version control systems (VCS) are among essential (almost life-saving) tools when programming in team. Also while working by themselves they can reveal a big deal useful. I had Mercurial and Mercurial-server installed on my desktop computer time ago and used them to backup and synchronize my programming experiments between the netbook and the desktop computer.

Since I installed Mercurial I went trough a couple of desktop full-reinstall, of course, I also had to reinstall and reconfigure the version control system tools. So, when I bought the Raspberry Pi 3, I did put using it as VCS server on top of my personal wish-list.

Why Git? Why GitLab?

I must say I have no complaints against Mercurial, it always worked without any problem, but I’ve become a GitHub user so, passing to Git also at home seemed me the natural thing to do. At the beginning I was thinking about a plain bare-bone Git installation, without any graphical user interface, just like it was for Mercurial-server. While I was looking for a suitable git-on-raspberry how-to page I literally stumbled on this GitLab Installation how-to.

GitLab is a Git server full featured with web interface, projects and users management. GitLab is Open-source, or at least exists a community version, but what triggered my decision is that it’s quite easy to install. Installing GitLab is not harder than installing a bare-bone Git server, so … here I am.

Installing GitLab

Installing GitLab has been a simple four-step process, at the end of installation process GitLab was ready-and-running without any need of configuration.

First I installed some required dependencies. Because of previous installations on my Raspberry the only one I had to install has been Postfix mail server.

sudo apt install curl openssh-server ca-certificates postfix apt-transport-https

Then I added GitLab repositories and keys to Raspbian sources:

curl https://packages.gitlab.com/gpg.key | sudo apt-key add -
sudo curl -o /etc/apt/sources.list.d/gitlab_ce.list "https://packages.gitlab.com/install/repositories/gitlab/raspberry-pi2/config_file.list?os=debian&dist=jessie" && sudo apt-get update

I then installed GitLab with a simple apt-get command

sudo apt-get install gitlab-ce

At last I executed the GitLab reconfiguration command in order to make configuration effective.

sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure

I edited GitLab configuration file (located in /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb) only to change two configuration details: I placed GitLab repository folder on Raspberry external USB disk

git_data_dirs({"default" => "/media/usbdisk/gitlab"})

And I set GitLab web server in order to work on a HTTP port different from default one.

external_url 'http://raspberrypi3:8887'

After any change of GitLab configuration file the reconfigure command must be executed in order to see them effective. In spite of changing GitLab web port SFPG picture gallery I had installed on the Raspberry stopped working, I’ll have to solve this in the near future.

First login

On the very first access to GitLab web page user is asked to change administrator password

Setting-up the Raspberry PI 3 as a home server

It has been some time since last time I wrote, unfortunately my job stole most of my limited free time keeping me from experimenting and so posting about it. At last I managed to collect enough free time to complete Raspberry PI 3 installation and replace the older model I was using as home server.

Just like before? Not exactly

When I started configuring and installing the Raspberry PI 3 I was hoping it would have been a simple repetition of operation I already performed on the older Raspberry. Most of it has been that way but in some cases I experienced some relevant difference.

Configuring a static IP address

I've been configuring static IP address on Linux since I installed my first Pentium III based Linux, so I really didn't expect any problem here. Once I configured “/etc/networking/interfaces file” I instead noticed the Raspberry was visible on the network with two different addresses. After some searching on the Internet I discovered it's because of a different way DACP client works on latest Raspbian release. The problem can be solved in two ways: first is configuring DHCP client in order to let it set a static address on network interface alternatively it's possible disable DHCP client for one or more network interface. I chose the latter, at the end, since the Raspberry is going to be a DHCP server so there is no deal in keeping DHCP client active. I disabled DHCP client from assigning address to both wired and wireless network interface by adding the following line to “/etc/dhcpcd.conf” configuration file.

denyinterfaces wlan0 eth0

DHCP server and wireless access point

Like I did on my first Raspberry server I configured the new one to work as DHCP server and a wireless access point. It seem there are no relevant changes since first time I did it, I simply had to follow my own instructions.

Installing applications

Installing apt-ger based applications like LAMP sever and MiniDLNA server has been a quite easy task, while to install other applications like RPI-Monitor I had to look for the updated download link on the Internet. I also installed the updated version of SFPG picture gallery, it works but picures thumbnails don't show. I'll look for a solution later.

Power supply and cables

Once I had the Raspberry PI 3 installed and configured on my desktop I pit it in place of the old one and … nothing was working. It took me some time of testing and pinging before I noticed the board power led wasn't properly lighted-up. The phone/tablet charger I used to supply the old Raspberry wasn't up to the Raspberry PI 3 power requirement. I replaced the power supply with the one I used for desktop test but it wasn't enough to make the Raspberry PI 3 working, I had to replace micro-USB power cable with a shorter one in order to have it working, I think it's better I'll buy a dedicated Raspberry PI 3 power supply soon.

New toy on the desk: Raspberry PI 3

Just before Christmas I've been to a “traditional” electronics and surplus fair, here in Genoa, and bought myself, among other things, a Raspberry PI 3 (version B) board. My goal is to replace, as home server, the Raspberry PI I bought two years ago in order to take advantage of the more computing power offered by the new board. Additionally the older board will be set free for more “experimental” experiments. As “accessories” to my new Raspberry board I bought a (clear) plastic case, a 16GB micro SD card and en external 2.5'' USB hard disk.

Installation and first tests

I first downloaded latest Raspbian release, the “Lite” version since I'm going to use it as a headless server. Like I did last time I copied the disk image on the 16GB SD card using the “dd” command.

sudo dd if=2016-11-25-raspbian-jessie-lite.img of=/dev/sdd

All worked fine but I had to fix a couple of things. The image I copied at the first tentative didn't boot, I had to remove all memory card partitions using Gparted then repeat the copy process. The disk copied after the second tentative works fine, I don't know if problem was because a failure in the first copy or because of how the card was pre-formatted.

The latest Raspbian release has SSH demon disabled by default to enable it I had just to add an empty “ssh” named file on the memory card root folder.

touch /media/maxx/boot/ssh

Netbeans 8.1 on the EEEPC 900

It's quite recent in the news that Netbeans, the Oracle Java IDE, is going to pass under the Apache wing. The immediate effect of this news has been to remind me to upgrade my EEEPC Netbeans installation.

Installation and first run

Netbeans for Linux is provided in the form of an auto-installing executable script, once downloaded I started it from shell:

chmod +x netbeans-8.1-javase-linux.sh
sudo ./netbeans-8.1-javase-linux.sh

when started with the “sudo” command the installation script install Netbeans into the “/usr/local” directory otherwise the script will install in your home directory.

Test Drive: Linux Mint 18 “Sarah” on the EEEPC

It has been some time since my latest “test-drive” of a linux distribution on the EEEPC. I must be honest about it: the EEEPC is getting everyday older and I’m slowly loosing interest in improoving its use. By the way afrer reading of the newly released Linux Mint version, powered by Cinnamon 3.0, I’ve been tempted to write a live disk on my USB stick and try how it performs on my old netbook.

First impressions

After boot Linux Mint starts with the usual, “good-old” fashioned, Cinnamon desktop

Cinnamon applications menu offers a modern interface to start applications with all features a good application launcher need

Natron: Open source video compositing

I often use my desktop computer to edit family videos. I'm far from being en expert or even en advanced amateur, my needs usually are limited to cutting out bed scenes, stitching the good ones with some effect and, sometimes, add head titles and a little of music. I usually use OpenShot for video editing and AviDemux in case my source video needed some simple processing before editing. These tools are more than enough for my limited needs but, while browsing around into the Internet, I read about a tool that appeared very promising to me: Natron, I so decided to install it and give it a try.

What Natron is

Natron is a compositing software. Its main function is mixing together different sources: video, pictures and text with addition of various filters and effects. Let's also point out what Natron is not: Natron isn't an editing software. Natron is not suited in cutting and stitching videos together even though, reading community forums, I understand it isn't impossible using it that way.

Natron user interface

Natron is a “node based” compositing software, the process applied to source video is graphically described by a graph where every node represent an elaboration step like, for example, an effect or a filter. May be it’s because I’m very “graph-minded” because of my work, but I felt at home with Natron suer interface from the very beginning. I started by trying to correct a very dark and noisy night scene:

Upgrading (the EEEPC) with low disk space

When, while installing Xubuntu, I decided EEEPC disk partitioning I based my decision on previous installation typical disk usage worrying mostly about “/home” and “/usr” partitions. I never would have thought about running out of space in the root “/” partition.

Then, the first time I tried to upgrade to latest Xubuntu distribution I got an error message about disk free space on partition being not enough to download distribution files (that usually take a little less than 1GB of disk space). Examining disk free space I discovered that very little free space was left on the root partition even if it was more then enough after my post-installation check.

Fortunately AskUbuntu came quickly at recover: here I quickly found a question asked from who had the same problem. To be precise the question was about problems with “/boot” partition low disk space bat I suppose it was because of a different partitioning schema, by the way solution worked for me.

Cleaning “apt-get” leftovers

As I learned from AskUbuntu question some of the “lost” disk space might be occupied by unused files or apt-get temporary files. So simply by executing the following commands …

sudo apt-get autoremove

sudo apt-get clean

some disk space can be set free.

Removing old Linux kernel images

If free space gained from the previous operation isn't enough some more space can be obtained by removing old Linux kernel images. Every time Ubuntu upgrade to e new kernel release the old one is kept available in to be used to solve possible compatibility issues. Such feature is scarcely user and is of no use at all in the eve of a major distribution upgrade.

First the currently used Linux kernel must be identified the command …

uname -a

does the job, here is the current output

Linux eeepc900 4.4.0-21-generic #37-Ubuntu SMP Mon Apr 18 18:34:49 UTC 2016 i686 i686 i686 GNU/Linux

while the command …

dpkg -l 'linux-image*'

lists all Linux kernel images currently installed, here is a sample output:

Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold

| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend

|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)

||/ Name Version Architecture Description

+++-==============-============-============-=================================

un linux-image <none> <none> (no description available)

un linux-image-3. <none> <none> (no description available)

rc linux-image-3. 3.19.0-15.15 i386 Linux kernel image for version 3.

rc linux-image-3. 3.19.0-28.30 i386 Linux kernel image for version 3.

rc linux-image-3. 3.19.0-33.38 i386 Linux kernel image for version 3.

rc linux-image-3. 3.19.0-43.49 i386 Linux kernel image for version 3.

ii linux-image-3. 3.19.0-56.62 i386 Linux kernel image for version 3.

ii linux-image-4. 4.2.0-34.39 i386 Linux kernel image for version 4.

ii linux-image-4. 4.4.0-21.37 i386 Linux kernel image for version 4.

rc linux-image-ex 3.19.0-15.15 i386 Linux kernel extra modules for ve

rc linux-image-ex 3.19.0-28.30 i386 Linux kernel extra modules for ve

rc linux-image-ex 3.19.0-33.38 i386 Linux kernel extra modules for ve

rc linux-image-ex 3.19.0-43.49 i386 Linux kernel extra modules for ve

ii linux-image-ex 3.19.0-56.62 i386 Linux kernel extra modules for ve

ii linux-image-ex 4.2.0-34.39 i386 Linux kernel extra modules for ve

ii linux-image-ex 4.4.0-21.37 i386 Linux kernel extra modules for ve

ii linux-image-ge 4.4.0.21.22 i386 Generic Linux kernel image

eventually older kernel images can be removed with an “apt-get” command like the following, changing of course the version number

sudo apt-get -y purge linux-image-x.yy.z-tt-generic linux-image-extra-x.yy.z-tt-generic linux-headers-x.yy.z-tt linux-headers-x.yy.z-tt-generic

If you look deeper in AskUbuntu answer you'll see that more complex scripts can be used to make the operation faster. I stopped here, I don't like automating too much when deleting things and, after all, this it's I problem I get into at most twice a year. So … I can do it manually

Place the Raspberry PI at the centre of your network

My recent problems with Internet providers, followed by the need to change my ADSL modem-router made me think if it would be wiser to make my home network less router dependent. Local network at my home, like most home networks, relies on the ADSL modem-router for the Dynamic Host Configuration (DHCP). Every time I changed the router I had so to reconfigure its DHCP server in order to restore my network configuration, often not being able to access to some network devices, like the NAS disk, until the DHCP was properly configured.

While looking for a Raspberry DHCP configuration how-to I literally stumbled into this page about using the Raspberry PI as a wireless router. This also inspired me about using the Raspberry also to provide a backup or private WI-FI access.

Hardware set-up

First things first: I already had a Wi-Fi dongle wandering in my drawers, I installed in the Raspberry PI USB port and checked it worked. Not all the wireless interfaces are able to be used in “access point mode”, to check if the one I had was compatible I installed the “iw” utility:

sudo apt-get install iw

executing the command:

iw list

I got a detailed list of the network interface features, among them in the the supported interfaces modes:

Supported interface modes:

* IBSS

* managed

* AP

* AP/VLAN

* WDS

* monitor

* mesh point

i got confirm that the interface could work as access point.

Test Drive: Ubuntu Mate 16.04 on the EEEPC

Here I am, again, doing some “test-drive” on the EEEPC 900 and some newly released Linux distribution. Even thought I found, with Xubuntu, a stable lightweight solution for my old netbook still I'm looking curiously to what other lightweight solutions have to offer. After reading about the soon to be released Ubuntu-Mate 16.04 and its new so called “Mutiny” desktop layout, I so decided to download and give it a try.

A quick look ...

After boot Ubuntu Mate 16.04 welcomes you with the usual reassuring old styled desktop. In addition a handy welcome application is started too.

Monitoring the Raspberry PI with RPI-Monitor

My Raspberry PI is, ,silently and tirelessly, doing its work as a headless server, mostly working as media-server thanks to MiniDLNA and SFPG gallery. Thanks to all this working silent and without asking maintenance I sometimes even forget about the Raspberry PI this is because I felt the need of looking for a tool that allowed me to check the Raspberry status trough a simple web interface.

RPI-Monitor

RPI-Monitor is a web-based monitoring application developed by RPI-Experiences. I got informed about it by reading its description on eLinux.org page. On the same page I also found detailed information on how to set-up repository and install RPI-Monitor package so that installing it has been a mere copy-and-paste exercise.

sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https ca-certificates
sudo wget http://goo.gl/rsel0F -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/rpimonitor.list
sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 2C0D3C0F
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install rpimonitor

Once installed RPI-Monitor is available at port 8888 of Raspberry PI address

The “Start” button brings to RPI-Monitor status page where monitoring information is neatly exposed

Ubuntu 15.10 “Wily Werewolf” on Veriton S661 (full install)

After almost one year I managed, just in these days, to change my Internet provider and have back my land-line ADSL connection. First things first, I started with updating my home desktop computer (the Acer Veriton S661) I left mostly unattended during this period since my mobile Internet contract was barely enough for daily connectivity needs. Unfortunately it seems my computer has been left too much without upgrading and the update process halted signaling many “404” errors while accessing to different repository locations. May be I could find another solution to upgrade my system but, since I usually keep the “/home/” folder on a separate partition, I decided to go for a complete re-installation of latest Ubuntu-Gnome release.

The installation process

I proceeded with installing as usual, prepared a USB disk with Ubuntu's tool, booted from it and went on with installing. On order to maintain my separate home partition I selected the custom “Something else” installation type

Test Drive: Ubuntu Mate 15.04 on the EEEPC 900

Ubuntu Mate is a Ubuntu derivative distribution equipped with Mate desktop environment. Ubuntu Mate has been recently admitted among the official Ubuntu derivatives, I've been reading some very positive post about it so I decided for giving it a quick (live) look on the EEEPC even if I had already reinstalled my netbook computer with Xubuntu,

First impressions

After the usual process of preparing a USB disk an booting the netbook from it I've been welcomed from a very Gnome-2-looking interface.

The default interface provide the usual Applications, Places and System menus: