Book Image

Raspberry Pi 2 Server Essentials

By : Piotr J Kula
Book Image

Raspberry Pi 2 Server Essentials

By: Piotr J Kula

Overview of this book

There’s no end to what you can do with a Raspberry Pi – it makes a huge range of tech projects possible. This book shows you how to transform it into a multipurpose web server, able to store and manage resources that lets you build some truly innovative and impressive computing creations. You’ll learn how to use your Raspberry Pi 2 to host a website using a range of different languages, host a game server, store files, and run everything from a media center to a cloud network. If you want to take control of your technological world, start building your own server and find out what’s possible with the Raspberry Pi microcomputer. Begin by getting your Pi set up – follow each step as the book shows you how to prepare a network and configure the additional features that you’ll need to build your projects. Once you’ve done this you’ll dig a little deeper and set up your pi as a file server, making sure it’s built for speed using a range of different tools, including Python, Node.js and ASP.NET. Following this the book shows you how to extend your server to allow you to host games, and stream live HD video before customizing it even further to create a fully-fledged media center. It doesn’t stop there however – the book then dives into the exciting world of the Internet of Things (IoT). You’ll learn how to install Windows IoT onto your Raspberry Pi, the operating system that’s driving embedded software projects all around the world. Once you’ve done this you’ll be ready to explore IoT further, as the book shows you how to use your device to host a cloud network that can form the basis of a wider IoT project.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Raspberry Pi 2 Server Essentials
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Hardware watchdog


A hardware watchdog is a digital clock that needs to be regularly restarted before it reaches a certain time.

Just like in the TV series Lost, there is a dead man's switch hidden on the island that needs to be pressed at regular intervals; otherwise, an unknown event will begin. In terms of the Broadcom GPU, if the switch is not pressed, it means that the system has stopped responding, and the reaction event is to restart Raspberry Pi and reload the operating system with the expectation that it will resolve the issue, at least temporarily.

Raspbian has a kernel module included—which is disabled by default—that deals with the watchdog hardware. A configurable daemon that runs on the software layer sends regular events (like pressing a button), referred to as a heartbeat to the watchdog, via the kernel module.

Enabling the watchdog and daemon

To get everything up and running, we need to do a few things, as follows:

  1. Add the following in the console:

    sudo modprobe bcm2708_wdog
    sudo...