TITLE: Raspberry Pi home server
DATE: 2023-12-24
AUTHOR: John L. Godlee
====================================================================


When we lived in London we had an old HP Compaq Elite 8300 desktop 
tower that we used as a home server. The server ran Ubuntu minimal 
server 18.04. I used the server to back up important documents, and 
used Samba to connect our laptops to access music, movies etc.

The server was very convenient for me, but it was a bit awkward for 
others to connect to if they weren't familiar with network shares 
or SSH. Additionally, the server was quite power hungry. I set it 
up to wake on LAN, but this meant I was the only one in the house 
who could turn it on.

In our new flat I aimed to upgrade the home server setup to reduce 
power consumption, increase storage capacity, and improve 
accessibility for less techy people.

Hardware

-   Raspberry Pi 4 Model B 8 GB
-   Integral SlimXpress 1TB USB External SSD - 1050 MB/s Read, 1000 
MB/s Write
-   GL.iNet GL-A1300 (Slate Plus) Wireless Travel Router

  [Raspberry Pi 4 Model B 8 GB]: 
https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-4-model-b/
  [Integral SlimXpress 1TB USB External SSD]: 
https://www.integralmemory.com/product/slimxpress-portable-ssd/
  [GL.iNet GL-A1300]: https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-a1300/

The RPi is connected to the router via a short ethernet cable, and 
to the SSD via USB. The RPi boots from a 64 GB Micro SD.

I used zipties to mount the three bits of hardware onto a section 
from a plastic crate, the kind used to hold fruits and vegetables. 
I then hung the "rack" under a gateleg table using screw-in hooks.

To play music in the living room the RPi is connected to a Yamaha 
CRX-M170 micro Hi-Fi system via a 3.5 mm to phono cable. 
Unfortunately, the 3.5 mm jack in the RPi 4 is terrible. The sound 
comes through very tinny with lots of interference. To get decent 
audio quality I had to buy an IQaudIO DAC Pro hat for the RPi. The 
DAC Pro connects via the GPIO pins to the RPi.

  [IQaudIO DAC Pro hat]: 
https://thepihut.com/products/iqaudio-dac-pro

  ![Server setup mounted to plastic tray 
'rack'.](https://johngodlee.xyz/img_full/rpi_server/server.jpg)

Software

We don't have internet in our new flat, instead we just use our 
mobile phones. The GL-A1300 router has a USB port that can connect 
an Android phone to use it for USB tethering. On the rare occasion 
that we need to connect the home LAN network to the internet we can 
tether a phone, but mostly we can remain offline.

The RPi runs Raspberry Pi OS Lite version 2023-12-05. This version 
of the OS doesn't include a desktop environment and works well as a 
server.

  [Raspberry Pi OS Lite]: 
https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/operating-systems/#raspberry-pi
-os-32-bit

I installed Jellyfin to serve video and audio from the RPi to all 
our devices. Jellyfin has an app for Android that works quite well, 
and a web app that is accessible over the local network that works 
well on laptops. Jellyfin can cast directly to a TV using DLNA.

  [Jellyfin]: https://jellyfin.org/

I installed Mopidy to play audio on the Hi-Fi from the RPi. I 
installed the Mopidy MPD extension, which allows MPD clients like 
M.A.L.P. to connect to the Mopidy instance. I installed the Mopidy 
MusicBox extension to provide a web client music player. I ran into 
a problem where Raspberry Pi OS wouldn't let me install any python 
packages via pip, including the Mopidy Jellyfin extension. All I 
had to do to fix the issue was to delete this file:

  [Mopidy]: https://mopidy.com/
  [Mopidy MPD extension]: https://mopidy.com/ext/mpd/
  [M.A.L.P.]: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.gateshipone.malp/
  [Mopidy MusicBox extension]: 
https://mopidy.com/ext/musicbox-webclient/

    sudo rm -rf /usr/lib/python3.11/EXTERNALLY-MANAGED

It took me some time to figure out how to get Mopidy and Jellyfin 
to both access .m3u8 playlists. Playlists are stored in 
Music/Playlists/, where Music/ is the directory where all other 
music is stored. I don't use the Mopidy Jellyfin extension, because 
I can't get it to play well with playlists. Playlists show up in 
both Jellyfin and Mopidy, but I have to create the playlists 
manually in the terminal. Mopidy doesn't have the ability to create 
playlists, and Jellyfin stores playlists as .xml files which Mopidy 
can't read. Yet, Jellyfin will happily add songs to an existing 
.m3u8 playlist; weird. It seems others have had similar problems 
judging by various Github issues.

  [Mopidy Jellyfin extension]: https://mopidy.com/ext/jellyfin/
  [various]: https://github.com/jellyfin/mopidy-jellyfin/issues/104
  [Github]: https://github.com/jellyfin/mopidy-jellyfin/issues/133
  [issues]: https://github.com/jellyfin/mopidy-jellyfin/issues/111

I installed Samba to make it easier for others to add media from 
their devices, and I installed qBittorrent (-nox variant with no 
X-server) to download media directly onto the server when it's 
connected to the internet.

  [Samba]: https://www.samba.org/
  [qBittorrent]: https://www.qbittorrent.org/

To create backups I have an additional 1TB SSD which is synced 
using rsync once a week. I have a third SSD that is synced every 
month, which I keep at work.

  [rsync]: https://github.com/WayneD/rsync