RPi supposedly has one of the best video setups of the single board computers. There’s a Pi-tuned distribution (OpenELEC) just for running it as a Kodi box. If I had a TV, I’d do that with it here.
(edit: added link, tweaked wording, removed question mark)
So it arrived today. It’s pretty neat-looking. If I can ever figure out how to make Windows 10 play nice with this USB wi-fi adapter and bridge the damned connection without blue-screening, I might even be able to talk to it someday.
I did not think this through, as usual.
I can ping it on the network. But it has no sshd turned on by default and the tricks that are supposed to work, do not. So now I’m trying a new image on the SD card.
Hey, that’s what kindling right now.actually I just did it and now I’m loading raspbian again.
I’m reading the forge server installation notes and I’m scared.
It’s alive, and running headless. Crashes off and on, I think Forge might be a bit much, but we’ll see.
now I just need to figure out how to get it to autorun.
I found a Ubuntu guide to get it to auto run, but doesn’t seem to work in Rasbian.
Edit 12 hours later, seems like Forge installed, but didn’t.
For my birthday a couple months ago Gratch got me this. WD PiDrive Compute Center. It comes with a Pi3 and a 375 GB HD that you can use to stage various Pi instances to develop and troubleshoot. I have mine set up with 6 or so images and I can boot between any of them. One is a straight vanilla, another is a Retro Pie setup and another is the start of a Magic Mirror I want to build. It makes it easy to develop the image then I can copy it to an SD card for the actual Pi I plan on using.
Unfortunately, the keyboard didn’t work out of the box (got a software patch for that later) and with the new job and studying for some certifications, I haven’t had time to play with it too much.
You all may hate me for this, but @sig knew what he was signing up for when he married me. 
He sent me a picture of his Raspberry Pi, and I couldn’t help myself.
I present to you: Raspberry Pinky Pi
Nice.
We had three people on our server today playing vanilla minecraft. Turns out my PCs settings were cranked too high for the server to keep up.
Now I need another SD card to try to figure out why Forge didn’t load right. Because I’m sure as check not going to break this one figuring it out.
I also need to figure out how to run the server without having to keep a terminal window active, and how to open it up to an internet white list. I’ve found instructions here and there, but I didn’t grok them well.
Can you use the ‘screen’ command on that OS?
Yes, that’s the route I was looking at.
I can monkey see monkey do this one.
if ! screen -list | grep -q “minecraft”; then
cd /home/pi/minecraft
screen -S minecraft -d -m java -jar -Xms512M -Xmx1008M spigot-1.9.jar nogui
fi
I think the top line is looking to see if it’s allready running.
The second one puts me inthe right directory.
The third line calls screen and runs the server. Not sure what the -d and -m do.
We want the server to start automatically when the Raspberry Pi reboots, so type sudo nano /etc/rc.local and enter su -l pi -c /home/pi/minecraft/minecraft.sh right before the exit command.
I assume this is a command to edit the set up to autostart the server. I’m a bit curious why Screen isn’t called on this one.
And I started to mess with this one but it’s all messed up. I’m beyond monkey learning here.
[Unit]
Description=Spigot MineCraft Server
[Service]
User=minecraft
Group=minecraft
ExecStart=/usr/bin/screen -S minecraft -D -m /usr/bin/java -server -jar -Xms512M -Xmx1008M spigot-1.10.2.jar nogui
WorkingDirectory=/home/pi
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=5s
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Multiple comments on this file talked about how it’s kind of flakey to run it this way.
I guess my first start is to learn how to actually use the screen command.
Screen is one of my favorite *nix commands and depending on how far you want go into the weeds with it, you can do some pretty interesting terminal manipulation.
To break it down a bit for your case @Woodman, this looks to me like it:
Runs screen
screen
creates a ‘screen’ named minecraft
-S minecraft
Detach any screen already named ‘minecraft’ and reattach it to this session
-d
do not create a ‘new’ screen session
-m
Command that will be run (with its arguments)
java -jar -Xms512M -Xmx1008M spigot-1.9.jar nogui
The surrounding ‘if’ clause is indeed checking if it is already running by listing the existing screen session names and looking for one named ‘minecraft’
*edited to reflect -d properly. Had a brain-lock…
Ahh, so you don’t need to run screen at the beginning since the script calls it and attaches it.
There is a -r command in there somewhere to take it over too, which calls it up.
This is better than how mine is set up, I think.
I stole it from here.
Forge still isn’t working, though oddly enough the clients are running Forge and doing OK. But I’m not going to mess with that until I can start a fresh server.
So mine is sitting on a little homemade shelf by the top bunk, acting as a private WiFi media hotspot. I can connect and Kodi will stream movies from it. In another week or so, the 7" touchscreen and case will arrive (at which time I may just mount it to the bottom of the top bunk, allowing me to watch movies prone and without using any muscles at all).
The second wifi adapter also arrives soon so it will then be an internet-connected (and sharing) media hotspot.
I’m not sure what I’m going to do with the arduino kit that is also on the way now, but I have some ideas.
Trying to troubleshoot some slow network issues, I removed the external hard drive–instant improvement. (Still sucks, but that’s the internet here.) Many “random” issues can be traced to inadequate power, which makes actually USING those four USB ports somewhat problematic. Not unexpected; I have a powered USB hub on the way to handle wlan1 and /dev/sda, so that should hopefully resolve the issue.
I have the screen and case and it looks nice, but I have not really been using it interactively that way; I more purchased it as a backup in case I FUBARed the networking and couldn’t SSH in–and for future need at home, when it might be a control panel for the media center or something. I may set up some sort of live network display or something, rather than just have it sit at a login screen waiting for input.
Other stuff (perhaps for later):
So now I want to play with this:
Mycroft is the world’s first open source voice assistant. It can run anywhere – on a desktop computer, inside an automobile, it even runs on a Raspberry Pi. It is open so it can be remixed, extended, improved. It can be used in anything from a science project to an enterprise software application.
But I need to find a speaker and microphone. I may have some in the electronics parts kit that came with my Arduino.
My powered USB hub arrived and seems to have solved most of the issues; internet is significantly more consistent, and file transfers over wireless from the hard drive are reasonably snappy. My roommates can access it reliably. I set it all up on top of my wall locker so it’s out of the way and the cords are less likely to be tripped on.
My Arduino is still sitting on my top bunk (I have no bunkmate–rank hath a few privileges) with wires and components splayed all over a breadboard. It looks like a bomb. I thought about leaving a note that said “This is not a bomb” in case the barracks get inspected again, but decided that might do more harm than good.
Another rpi is on its way and my Arduino tech manual arrived today.
I tell myself this is all justified because my allowance is half as much once I get home again. But I might have some sort of problem.
They seem like a perfect thing to have in your current conditions. Cheap, fun, multipurpose. Get some game pads and you could also have an awesome RetroPi setup if there’s anybody around who likes classic Mario Karts and such.
Pi-Hole 3.0 was released yesterday. Run sudo pinhole -update to get the new hotness.
My FlightAware stick and antenna arrived today, and after a couple minutes of fiddling I’m feeding ADS-B data to FlightAware.com and (I think) adsbexchange.com.
My range is pathetic, though. Better than 90% of my reported positions are within a 50 mile radius. Doesn’t help that the setup is in my basement at the moment. I knew I should have had power and Cat5 run to the crawlspace/attic over the upstairs bedrooms…