James Batchelor – Page 6 – Useful I.T. & VoIP Ramblings

Raspberry Pi Torrent Server – From Scratch

As requested, this is a guide to taking a Raspberry Pi and turning it into an always on Torrent box, complete and self-sufficient with its own mass storage meaning it needs no help from other computers. Also, as the Pi consumes such little power compared to a full desktop PC, money can be saved by using the Pi for overnight transfers while other computers can remain off.

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For this project I recommend a RPi 2, as its powerful enough to perform the transfers up to its maximum 100Mbps network speed, and is a cheaper choice since the RPi 3 superseded it last year. To get started, you need the following hardware:

Raspberry Pi 2 board.
Micro USB wall adaptor – Needs to be capable of 2Amp output.
Micro SD card – Minimum of 8GB, class 6 or above, plus SD adaptor for connecting to a PC.
USB Portable Hard drive – USB powered is preferred, I use a Toshiba Canvio Basics 1TB.
Ethernet Cable – And spare port on the modem/router for internet connection.
A PC – On the same network as the Pi for connection and configuring.

The Pi was designed to as low cost as possible to the user, so apart from the Pi board you may already have everything to run a Pi, and if not these are cheap and easily available online.

With a RPi 2 at hand, let’s get started…

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2 Servers 1 UPS, Windows 2012 Edition

In a previous post I showed how to shutdown two servers safely using just one UPS with a single communications port. It was pretty straight forward with the comms port connected to a Windows Server 2003 machine.

But doing the same with Windows Server 2012 is much more difficult, since Microsoft decided to remove the ability to run a program on a low battery event from its power management settings. To make things worse I discovered that a bug in Server 2008 and later meant that issuing a Shutdown command from the native power settings would not perform a clean shut down, instead killing the power in a few seconds. This is not good news for RAID arrays and data integrity.

Time for a new solution, and since Microsoft are of no use, help would need to come from a 3^rd party. After research and testing answer came from Shutter, a small program that runs as a trigger and event type program for a variety of different scenarios, with battery discharging status being one. Luckily two instances of the program could be run, one to shut down the remote servers and another for the host machine. Importantly the program can also be run as a Windows service, but more on this in the walk through. here is how it is done:

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New Website: Canton TV

In January I was given the opportunity to design and build a new website to help colleagues in the retail store where I worked. This website serves as a demonstration on how I took my website and server knowledge to create a low cost solution to an issue I was confronted with.

This occurred when working in a retail store but can be re-purposed to suit other needs.

What I came up with was Canton TV, a website written in ASP.NET C# and hosted on my home server, it served as a tool for colleagues of varying technological skills create messages and upload images for display in video format on screen in a communal area of the store.

Read on for the full story…

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Adding Kodi Sources Manually

During my migration from Windows Server 2003 to Server 2012, I encountered an issue with Kodi on Raspberry Pi and how it connects to the Win 2012 file share. When accessing the server with a Samba file share instead of a prompt for credentials the error message “Operation not permitted” is displayed.

Kodi allows the manual adding of network locations but does not support adding the credentials that are needed to access the location.

Therefore a bit of tweaking is needed to get access to Windows 2012 shares on Kodi.

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Connecting to a Headless Raspberry Pi

A great feature of the Raspberry Pi is that it can be fully used as a headless unit, meaning it does not need a monitor, keyboard or any other input device connected. This is great when running it as a server or for automated processes that require the unit to be tucked away.

What is annoying is that setting up the Pi for the first time may need those input devices to be able to configure the network and install applications. Thankfully there is a way to connect to a headless Pi from the start, with it only needing power and Ethernet connection.

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OSMC on Pi with PPTP VPN

The arrival of the Raspberry Pi 2 meant the B+ previously used as a server was now ready for a new purpose. These little machines make great media players and is easy to setup so this would be its new role.

However, this Pi would be in my parents’ home, and miles away from where my videos are stored. I didn’t want to add a hard drive locally as syncing the library would be an issue. But thanks to the fibre internet connection on the server side I could upload at 10Mbps, enough to stream media across the net.

Therefore, the plan is to use an install of OSMC and add a VPN connection to my home server that starts when the Pi starts to make the operation seamless.

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Review: Asus X205TA

It’s not often that I post a review about a product on this blog, but on this occasion I want to showcase an item that does not have a lot of exposure on the web, nor the reviews do it justice.

I’m talking about the Asus X205TA, essentially a low cost, low weight, basic Windows laptop that does the basics. At a retail price of £179 (less with the offers it seems to attract) its price point puts it among lower end Android tablets and Chromebooks. But here the big attraction is its ability to run full versions of Windows, making it a contender as an ultra-portable daily driver.

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2 Servers, 1 UPS

With the new server up and running it seemed fitting to connect it to my UPS, and thanks to the low power consumption of the HP Microservers I still get around 40 minutes of battery only time with both servers running before the UPS runs out of juice.

Unfortunately, the UPS in use only has one monitoring port which is connected to my original server, meaning during a spell of prolonged power outage, the new server will not know when to shut down safely and will continue to run until the UPS runs out of battery supply, leaving it vulnerable to data corruption that affected the original server prior to battery backup.

But with a simple script and some setup both servers can shut down safely before the batteries run out.

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Raspberry Pi 2

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has brought a new model of the Pi to the table, so with the same low price it was easy to add to my Pi family.

For those not yet familiar with the RPi 2, it keeps the small and simple form factor of its predecessors, but gives performance upgrades in the form of an 800mhz quad core processor, with overclocking options still available, and combined it with a whole Gigabyte of RAM. These upgrades, on paper at least sound that it could make the Pi into a useable desktop machine, with less freezing during full CPU load that was easy to achieve previously.

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Trouble Accessing BIOS with Windows 10?

Since installing Windows 10 the option to enter BIOS settings disappeared on my HP Pavillion DV8, with the only way to get it back was to pull the CMOS battery from the laptop and perform a hard reset.

If you’re having the same trouble the solution is easy, instead of clicking shut down to turn off the laptop and switch it on again, click restart instead! Seems simple but I always used shut down to allow the machine to cool off before turning on again.

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