Beaglebone Black Heartbeat LED

Sun, 02/16/2014 - 1:54pm by bjoern

If the BeagleBone Black is running as small server in continuous operation like mine, the flashing heartbeat LED is sometimes quite disturbing. It should indicate whether the system is still working, but as it continues to flash when the server has already set his service, it doesn't really make any sense in that case.

The BeagleBone Black has 4 built-in LEDs that can be affected by the user. They are denoted by usr0 to usr3.
The settings for them are in the folder /sys/class/leds/

Category: 
Beaglebone Black / Raspberry Pi

Swap-File on a Beaglebone Black

Thu, 02/06/2014 - 12:55pm by bjoern

If you want to use a Beaglebone Black or Raspberry Pi as a small server, it makes sense to give him a little swap space.
But if you you are not able to use an own swap-partition, you can use a swap-file.

This can be done in a few steps

  1. Create a file in the desired size
    The easiest way is to use the universal tool dd. The command is: 
    dd if=/dev/zero of=/Path-to-File/swapfile bs=1M count=size of the paging file

    So if you want to have a 128 (256, 512) megabyte swap file, the command would be:

Category: 
Beaglebone Black / Raspberry Pi

Using Raspberry Pi or Beaglebone Black as Mail-Server

Thu, 01/23/2014 - 12:13pm by bjoern

If you are working with more than one computer you might know this problem - your incoming and outgoing mails are spread over your several computers and often enough you have to search one specific mail on several machines.

To avoid that an IMAP-Mailbox with enough storage ist the best solution. But if you are not in the comfortable situation that someone has already done that for you, you might want to build one on your own.

I decided to use my Raspberry Pi to achieve that.

Category: 
Banana Pi
Beaglebone Black / Raspberry Pi

Move MySQL default storage place

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 1:03pm by bjoern

The BeagleBone Black has a standard 2 GB built-in flash memory , but that can sometime be pretty close depending on the installed operating system and installed programs .

Moreover, it is quite useful to have certain applications, such as a php- based CMS to run with MySQL database on faster memory such as USB flash or an external USB hard drive .

Category: 
Beaglebone Black / Raspberry Pi

Enhance Storage on the Beaglebone Black

Sat, 01/18/2014 - 11:30pm by bjoern

The BeagleBone Black has a standard 2 GB built-in flash memory, but depending on the installed operating system and programs that sometimes can be pretty small.
If you still want to push some data to be home-folder or would like to operate the BeagleBone as WebServer, you just need more memory.

The memory can be expanded to 2 ways:

  • The installation of a micro SD card
  • The installation of USB memory.

The USB storage can be either a USB flash memory or, if a little more storage is needed, an external USB hard drive.

Category: 
Beaglebone Black / Raspberry Pi

Give Beaglebone Black a static IP

Mon, 12/09/2013 - 11:39pm by bjoern

If your Raspberry or Beaglebone is attached to your network and is doing some Jobs for you, it is important that it is always accessible with the same IP-Address.

In most cases the Network-Router, which is the DHCP-Server as well, will try to give every Computer connected to your Network always the same dynamic IP-Address, but this is not for sure.

By default the Raspberry / Beaglebone is set up to search for a DHCP-Server and to receive a dynamic IP-Address, but it is also possible to give your machine a static IP-Address.

Category: 
Beaglebone Black / Raspberry Pi

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