Installation¶

Flash your SD Card with the OS of your choice, in this case, we'll be using Raspberry Pi OS Lite. Head over to the Operating Systems page for more information. You can choose Raspberry Pi OS Desktop, however the Lite version will contain much less clutter that will be unnecessary.

Post-Installation¶

As a general rule of thumb, after installing the OS it is recommended to update the sources and packages:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Configuring¶

Before continuing we must change some system information using the raspi-config utility.

Change the Hostname¶

The hostname is the name of the machine, by default it is set to pi which might not be descriptive enough. In order to change it, open the configurator utility:

sudo raspi-config

And choose the following options:

System Options > Hostname

And insert the hostname you wish to use.

Disable Screen Blanking¶

Since this will be an always-on monitoring dashboard, we must disable the screen from turning off. Inside the raspi-config utility, select the options:

Display Options > Screen Blanking

And disable it.

Change the Timezone¶

Your Raspberry Pi might have the incorrect timezone set, it is very important to have the correct time in your device to avoid problems with connectivity. Inside the raspi-config utility, select the options:

Localisation Options > Timezone

And pick your own timezone.

Connect to Wi-Fi¶

In the case that using Ethernet is not possible, Wi-Fi will be necessary. Since we do not have a GUI yet, we need to connect to the Internet through the raspi-config. Inside the utility, select the options:

System Options > Wireless LAN

Insert your Wi-Fi's SSID and password to connect.

Enable SSH¶

Remote control will be necessary to avoid having to use the machine directly. For this, SSH should be enabled. In the same raspi-config utility, select the options:

Interface Options > SSH > Enable

SSH should now be enabled.

Enable Autologin¶

We need this machine to automatically log with the admin user, for this choose the following options:

System Options > Auto Login > Enable

The user will be automatically logged in on system startup.

Packages¶

Here's a list of packages I like to have on the server.

sudo apt-get install tmux xterm git neofetch

Installing gotop¶

gotop is a pretty performance monitor that display a nice UI on the terminal. To install this, run the following commands:

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/cjbassi/gotop /tmp/gotop
/tmp/gotop/scripts/download.sh
sudo mv gotop /usr/local/bin

Generate SSH Key¶

This server in particular will SSH to other machines to monitor them with gotop. For this we'll create an SSH key with the following command:

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "[email protected]"

Then, copy the contents of the ~/.ssh/ed25519.pub file into the destination server's ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file.

Installing a WM¶

For this server we will need a GUI. We'll install a simple WM to avoid overwhelming the Raspberry Pi with heavy usage that might hinder our experience. For this, we'll use Awesome WM.

First, install X and Awesome:

sudo apt-get install xinit awesome 

And start it,

startx

We'll install a theme to the WM so it does not look too bare-bones. We'll use awesome-copycats for this. Install this with:

git clone --recurse-submodules --remote-submodules --depth 1 -j 2 https://github.com/lcpz/awesome-copycats.git
mkdir -p ~/.config/awesome
mv -bv awesome-copycats/{*,.[^.]*} ~/.config/awesome; rm -rf awesome-copycats
cd ~/.config/awesome
cp rc.lua.template rc.lua

Finally, restart awesome by right-clicking anywhere on the desktop and selecting the Restart option.

In order for the Raspberry Pi to automatically open Awesome on system boot, edit the following file:

sudo nano /etc/profile

And add the following lines:

if [[ ! $DISPLAY && $XDG_VTNR -eq 1 ]]; then
  exec startx
fi

Customizing Terminal¶

Create a .Xresources file with:

nano ~/.Xresources

And paste the following content:

*foreground:   #c5c8c6
*background:   #1d1f21
*cursorColor:  #aeafad
*color0:       #000000
*color1:       #912226
*color2:       #778900
*color3:       #ae7b00
*color4:       #1d2594
*color5:       #682a9b
*color6:       #2b6651
*color7:       #929593
*color8:       #666666
*color9:       #cc6666
*color10:      #b5bd68
*color11:      #f0c674
*color12:      #81a2be
*color13:      #b294bb
*color14:      #8abeb7
*color15:      #ecebec

Now the terminal should have pretty colors.

Firewall¶

UFW is a friendly frontend for iptables that makes it a lot easier to add connection rules to your firewall.

We'll need to install UFW and set it up.

sudo apt-get install ufw
sudo ufw default allow outgoing
sudo ufw default deny incoming
sudo ufw allow ssh
sudo ufw enable

The commands should be pretty self-explanatory, these default the firewall to allow any connections going from the server to the Internet and deny any incoming connections from the Internet to the server.

Make sure to also enable the ssh ports, otherwise you may get locked out of your system remotely and may need to physically configure the firewall to allow SSH connections.