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

Updating Raspberry Pi


The Raspberry Pi essentially has three software layers: the closed source GPU boot process, the boot loader (also known as the firmware), and the operating system. At the time of writing book, we cannot update the GPU code. But maybe, one day, Broadcom or hardware hackers will tell us how do to this.

This leaves us with the firmware and the operating system packages. Broadcom releases regular updates for the firmware as precompiled binaries to the Raspberry Pi Foundation, which then releases them to the public. The Foundation and other community members work on Raspbian, and release updates via the aptitude repository; this is where we get all our wonderful applications from.

It is essential to keep both the firmware and the packages up to date so that you can benefit from bug fixes and new or improved functionality from the Broadcom chip.

Raspberry Pi 2 uses ARMv7 as opposed to Pi 1, which uses ARMv6. It is recommended to use the latest version of the Raspbian release...