Linux

LibreNMS: What is it and how does it work?

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LibreNMS gUIDE

This article covers the LibreNMS network monitoring tool, from installation and configuration to features and usage. Introduction to LibreNMS LibreNMS is a powerful open-source network monitoring solution that can be used to monitor devices and services on your network. It offers a wide range of features, including support for a variety of protocols, performance monitoring, alerts, and more. LibreNMS is easy to install and configure, and it can be used on a variety of platforms. In this guide, we will cover the basics of LibreNMS, … Read more

How to Install and Use Netstat on Linux (CentOS/RHEL, Debian/Ubuntu, OpenSuse & Arch Linux)

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How to Install and Use Netstat on Linux

This article provides a tutorial on how to install and use Netstat, a command-line network tool, on Linux. Netstat is a command-line utility that can be used to view network connections, routing tables, and a variety of other network-related information on Linux systems. While Netstat is typically used to troubleshoot network issues, it can also be used for tasks such as monitoring server traffic or checking which ports are open on a system. Why Use Netstat? Netstat is a network monitoring tool that can be … Read more

Linux Tip: Using visudo to Avoid Costly Mistakes

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Linux visudo

Linux Tip: Use visudo to Edit the sudoers File to Avoid Costly Mistakes This article will show you how to use visudo to edit the sudoers file to grant root access to users – and protect against making mistakes that could lock you out of your Linux system forever. What is the sudoers File? The sudoers file defines which users have access to the sudo command on Linux systems. The file is located at: /etc/sudoers …and it looks like this: # # This file MUST be edited with the ‘visudo’ command as root. # # … Read more

How to Configure vsftpd an Anonymous FTP Server

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Anonymous vsftpd server

This article will show you how to configure vsftpd as an anonymous FTP server which does not require authentication. vsftpd is an FTP file server which can run on Linux. FTP is is the file transfer protocol. It’s been around forever (since the 1970’s!), so it works with just about everything. I run vsftp on an openwrt router as a quick and dirty file sharing solution that will work with even the oldest of my devices (including Windows 3.1 and old Macintosh computers). The software for these old machines … Read more

Building a Raspberry Pi 4 WiFi Access Point + Airplay Server

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Raspberry Pi Access Point and Airplay

This tutorial will detail how to build a wireless access point using a Raspberry Pi 4 with hostapd. I’ll also set up an Airplay server using shairport-sync so that my access point can play music. There are a number of tutorials for setting up a Raspberry Pi as an access point, but many are outdated or don’t work – this one does! The Setup I want to set up my Pi as an access point – supplying internet via ethernet cable and broadcasting a wireless network. I’ll be … Read more

Browsing the Internet on a 1989 Macintosh II with a Web Rendering Proxy

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Browsing the Internet on a 1989 Macintosh II with a Raspberry Pi

For completely impractical reasons I decided to try and browse the internet using my 1989 Macintosh IICI computer. Here’s how it went. I’ve previously tried web browsing with Web Rendering Proxy on a 1993 Windows 3.11 computer, and thought I’d see how the Apple experience stacks up. Setting up the Raspberry Pi with Web Rendering Proxy Web Rendering Proxy is a neat little tool that lets you browse the internet from older devices. It works by rendering a modern web-page in a modern Chromium browser, … Read more

DIY Raspberry Pi Powered Pinball Machine [Kitchen Build]

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Raspberry Pi Powered Pinball

This article will show you how I built a DIY Raspberry Pi Powered Pinball game using GDevelop and an Arduino to add physical push-buttons to control the game. GDevelop is a zero-code game development studio, so this article has almost no coding required. I’ve been meaning to check out GDevelop for a while, so I’ve combined a simple GDevelop game with a 2-button Arduino game controller to make a little virtual pinball machine.  Here’s the finished product in action! What We’re Building As you can … Read more

Linux: Set Which Network Connection You Get Internet From [Default Route]

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Linux set default internet route

This quick tutorial will show you how to set which network Linux uses to access internet when multiple networks are connected by setting the default route. If you have a Linux device (for example a Raspberry Pi) connected to multiple networks (like being connected to a wireless and wired network simultaneously), you might have trouble connecting to the internet. That’s because Linux will have automatically set up some default routes, and will have somewhat arbitrarily picked which interface it tries to use to access the internet … Read more

DIY Raspberry Pi Chopping Board HomeLab

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Raspberry Pi Chopping Board Lab

Here’s an odd solution I came up with to deal with the tangled mess that is my Raspberry Pi HomeLab – mounting it on a cheap kitchen chopping board. There’s not a lot more to be said for it really – it’s a Raspberry Pi attached to a chopping board. But why? I noticed that the micro-HDMI connection to the Pi was getting wonky – every time I shifted things around force was applied to the tiny connector.  I wanted to mount the Pi and … Read more

DietPi – A lightweight Raspberry Pi OS Alternative

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Diet-Pi - A lightweight Raspberry Pi OS Alternative

Here’s a quick screenshot walk-through of the installation of DietPi OS for Raspberry Pi.  DietPi is a minimalist but fully featured alternative to Raspberry Pi OS.  I’ve run through the install process so that you can see how everything looks before trying it yourself. Previously, we covered TwisterOS – another Raspberry Pi targetted Linux distribution  which aims to be super user friendly and includes a lot of extra software – check it out if you don’t think the minimalist DietPi is for you. Download & … Read more