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blog(raspberry-alma): add the blog post
Signed-off-by: Matej Focko <me@mfocko.xyz>
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---
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title: Raspberry Alma
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description: |
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My experience with running “gaming” desktop on Linux.
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date: 2024-07-20
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authors:
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- key: mf
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title: a.k.a. useless admin or “Sir Tweak-a-Lot”
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tags:
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- raspberry-pi
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- opensuse
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- almalinux
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- ansible
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- self-hosting
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---
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Every now and then I get angry at something not working on the Raspberry and so
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I decide to swap the OSs. Now it's time for something new and not expected.
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<!--truncate-->
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## Purpose and past
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After I've subscribed a VPS at vpsfree.cz for myself, I got an opportunity to
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drop using an old laptop for running a local “server”. At that point all I've
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had was self-hosted Gitea, some aliases on nginx and that was all. Out with the
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old laptop and let's begin experimenting with the Raspberry, right?
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The first OS that got on the Raspberry was _archLinux_ (BTW…). I've been using
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it for a long time and had the best experience with. I haven't hit any issues,
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but at the same time, you need to keep in mind we're running it off the SD card
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and they are known to get worn out quickly, especially if you write **a lot**
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which… guess what, is quite common with rolling and bleeding-edge distribution
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:smile: And the worst part is keeping up with the updates.
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And that's how I migrated to openSUSE Leap :) I've been using openSUSE for at
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least 4 years during the high school and a bit more before and after… openSUSE
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is very user-friendly (YaST is amazing) distribution and honestly just works.
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However the cost lies in Cockpit not being available[^1] and some weird design
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decision, e.g., networking stack is very fragile[^2].
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And I've got finished in the recent weeks with some issues during updates, but
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those can be, of course, blamed on me, cause I don't watch over it as I should
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:)
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I should probably sum up the latest state of what was running before I decided
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to go for a merciless wipe. So here it is:
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- local Gitea instance, just in case and out of habit
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- Wireguard connection for easy administration
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- Certbot & nginx; nginx is probably the biggest piece of work as it also
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provides reverse proxy for mikrotik router and Ubiquiti AP provided by ISP
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- CUPS server that has joined the journey once the HP printer was too big of
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a pain in the :peach: to handle via USB
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- DDNS service, cause there's public, but dynamic IP from ISP
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## Choosing the next distro
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I had the switch in mind for some time, but I couldn't decide on the
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distribution… In the ideal world, I'd just slap CentOS Stream on it, **but**
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there's no Raspberry “support” for CentOS[^3]. So the other choices were plain
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Debian and something else from the RHEL-family which could be either Fedora[^4],
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AlmaLinux or Rocky Linux.
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I should admit that I'm not a big Debian fan :smile: Even though _12 bookworm_
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is relatively on the same terms as anything that tries to match RHEL9, it still
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feels weird. That might be caused by the fact that I've switched RPM-based
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distributions a long time ago (including screwing around with archLinux and
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_Jean Tux_[^5]) and never looked back (except for the desktop with NVIDIA GPU
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that's pain in the :peach: and only Ubuntu runs reasonably… well).
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Wearing the _red fedora_ also ruled out the Rocky Linux :slightly*smiling_face:
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as I don't endorse nor support their \_way of operation*
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So AlmaLinux it is!
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## Installing AlmaLinux 9
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I'm going with AlmaLinux 9.4 on Raspberry Pi 3B. Opened the AlmaLinux's wiki and
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first thing I got slapped by is
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> original Raspberry Pi 3 (without "+" models) are not supported
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GREAT! I took the risk, installed it. And it didn't boot :grin: It turns out
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that the WiFi kernel module caused a kernel panic on the boot. From some people
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on Reddit I found that it caused some issues, **but** worked, so I've just
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decided to pop the SD card back in a PC and deny the module from loading. Voilà!
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It boots!
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## Setting up the “local server”
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:::caution Public disclaimer
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I suck as admin…
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:::
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Both the Raspberry and my VPS are maintained in the _caveman-style_ :smile: And
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that's why I've decided to start with the less painful one (the Raspberry) to
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write the Ansible playbooks for :)
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I have already managed to migrate my dotfiles and “bootstrap” to be run via
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Ansible, so I've just proceeded to extend that and also reorganize it a bit,
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cause the roles grew in size :eyes:
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And I have to admit that I've been mostly successful. Let's delve into details!
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### SELinux
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Yeah… that's something that hasn't been running on the openSUSE and I totally
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forgot that hardening the SSHD config (including port change) requires notifying
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SELinux about the port change :) Of course I managed to cut myself off :smile:
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### Certbot
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Certbot was the service I feared the most, as there is no reasonable way to
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automate this. You need to run it manually at least the first time. But in the
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end, it was quite OK.
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### Cockpit
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One downside of _caveman-style_ administration is the fact that you forget about
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the tweaking you do. Reverse proxy breaks Cockpit by default. I was reading
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through the documentation, but haven't managed to find the part that mentioned
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the specific settings I had to change. When I was about to open the PR with
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proposed changes, I noticed that it was in a different chapter :man_facepalming:
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### CUPS
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Cups went rather smoothly… except for the fact that it doesn't work on the one
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and only Ubuntu desktop and there are no logs with reason why it fails to add
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the printer :slightly_smiling_face:
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Additionally installing the HP printer via `hp-setup` is very interesting
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experience… I would've never expected the CLI to have a progress bar that opens
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up at 0% and then just switches into _terms & conditions_… Yes, that progress
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bar stayed at 0% even though it was downloading a PPD file **and progressing**.
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### DDNS
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I had smallish issue with deciding how to run the DDNS service. I went with
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dropping my own buggy script and had to choose a DDNS client. Found _inadyn_
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(that isn't built at all for Fedora and family) and _ddclient_. The _ddclient_
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had some not very nice feedback, and the version that introduced the Cloudflare
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support I need, was not included, so I dropped that. _inadyn_ is not packaged,
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so I've set it up as systemd timer spawning a container :)
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## Summary
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Overall I've had a very pleasant experience setting up the AlmaLinux on the
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Raspberry. Even though I took a gamble with the officially unsupported model of
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RPi, it works. And it also seems to be filling the purpose it has!
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[^1]:
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AFAIK there was some issue with dependencies, so it is available on
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Tumbleweed and also in the latest Leap 15.6
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[^2]:
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By default uses _wicked_ and even when running it on desktop via
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_NetworkManager_ I've hit some inconsistencies with DNS, but… DNS **is** the
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Devil, right? :grin:
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[^3]: And neither RHEL to be fair ;)
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[^4]:
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6-month release cycle goes against the idea to have the least amount of
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updates as possible… and on top of that I think that we can safely agree on
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the fact that Fedora feels like _archLinux with extra steps_
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[^5]: Gentoo…
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