Articles about software development operations

Setting up WordPress on Raspberry Pi 3 with Raspbian Stretch Lite, Nginx, MariaDB and PHP 7 as the LEMP stack

Raspbian Stretch was released on 17th August 2017 and this will mean that we will be able to get a variant of Debian 9 on our Raspberry Pi. With Raspbian Stretch, we will be able to run WordPress or any PHP framework with PHP 7.0 which Zend had indicated a performance boost of up to two folds as compared to PHP 5.6.

Just like the benefits that blogging brings to a programmer, the performance boost that PHP 7 brings about is a good reason for me to port my blog over to PHP 7.

Before porting my blog over to PHP 7, it will make sense for me to perform a little proof of concept on my Raspberry Pi 3 first. With Raspbian Stretch Lite, I can see for myself that my blog runs well with PHP 7.0 before spawning a new Digital Ocean instance for Techcoil.

This post documents how I setup an instance of WordPress on Raspberry Pi 3 with Raspbian Stretch Lite, nginx, MariaDB and PHP 7 as the LEMP stack.

Installing Certbot on Raspbian Jessie Lite for deploying Let’s Encrypt certificates

Let’s Encrypt is an awesome open certificate authority that give digital certificates for free. The introduction of Let’s Encrypt had given ordinary folks like me the ability to host their own website that browsers will mark as secured – without paying hefty fees. Matching Let’s Encrypt with Raspberry Pi, we can easily deploy secure applications at home to serve clients anytime, anywhere.

The issuance of digital certificates is automated by software using the ACME protocol. We will need to run such a software on the devices which are going to serve as web hosts which speak HTTPS. Let’s Encrypt recommends that people with shell access use the Certbot ACME client to request for Let’s Encrypt certificates.

Since I had recently setup a reverse proxy server with nginx, Raspbian Jessie Lite and Raspberry Pi 3 with the shell terminal, I continue on to install Certbot on the Raspbian Jessie Lite operating system for deploying Let’s Encrypt certificates for my reverse proxy server to serve HTTPS traffic on behalf of future upstream servers.

How to setup a reverse proxy server with nginx, Raspian Jessie Lite and Raspberry Pi 3

If you plan to deploy multiple devices at home and made them publicly accessible from outside your home network, you may want to consider setting up a reverse proxy server that will route HTTP traffic from the internet to the respective devices residing in your home network.

Tagged with an affordable price tag with good specifications, the Raspberry Pi 3 is an ideal candidate for the hardware of a reverse proxy server at home. And since the nginx server is a powerful reverse proxy server that can run efficiently on commodity hardware, it is an ideal candidate for the software aspect of a reverse proxy server.

This post documents how to setup a reverse proxy server with nginx, Raspian Jessie Lite and Raspberry Pi 3.

The reverse proxy server

With the proliferation of cloud computing and single board computers, the term – reverse proxy server, becomes a frequent mention in technical specifications that we may encounter as a developer or system implementation consultant.

Finding myself having to reiterate my understanding of the reverse proxy server, I reckoned that I should document what I know about the reverse proxy server so that I have a place where people can reference when they are lost with the topic of reverse proxy server.

How to setup Raspbian Jessie Lite on Raspberry Pi 3 to run Python 3 applications

The Raspbian operating system is the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s official supported operating system. As of this writing, Raspbian comes in two flavours – one with a graphical user interface for us to build a low cost desktop computer and the other without the graphical user interface.

If you intend to use your Raspberry Pi 3 with sensors and build a web interface for you to manage those sensors, Raspbian Jessie Lite is one operating system which you may want to install on your Raspberry Pi 3.

And with the versatility of Python 3, setting up Raspbian Jessie Lite on Raspberry Pi 3 to run Python 3 applications will be one of the first task that you will perform before you embark on your next sensor based project with the Raspberry Pi 3.

This post documents the steps that I took to setup Raspbian Jessie Lite on Raspberry Pi 3 to run Python 3 applications.

How to host your Python 3 Flask MVP with Supervisor on Ubuntu Server 16.04

Due to its minimalistic design, the Python Flask framework is ideal for building the web server layer of minimal viable products (MVP) to validate customers’ needs. However, development work is just one part of the user validation efforts. To ensure that our customer can access our Flask MVP and provide feedback as and when they are available, we will need to get it running with as a server daemon.

Supervisor is a convenient tool for running applications as a server daemon.

This post documents the steps that I took to host a Python 3 Flask MVP with Supervisor on an Ubuntu Server 16.04 instance.

How to setup Ubuntu Classic Server 16.04 on Raspberry Pi 3 for running Python 3 applications

Most of the customers who wanted to try out my minimal viable products (MVP) would provide me with an instance of Ubuntu Classic Server 16.0x these days. As such, it makes sense for me to trial my MVPs on the Ubuntu Classic Server 16.0x to ensure that I spend minimal time in deploying my MVPs to validate my customers’ needs. Since I have a few Raspberry Pi 3s lying around in the house, I can install a version of Ubuntu Classic Server 16.0x to serve as the development server for me to trial my MVPs.

Fortunately, the good folks at ubuntu-pi-flavour-maker.org had put up an optimised Ubuntu Classic Server 16.04 image for Raspberry Pi 3.

This post documents the steps that I took to run Ubuntu Classic Server 16.04 on my Raspberry Pi 3 for running Python 3 applications.

Installing Octave on my MacBook via Homebrew

Andrew Ng’s Machine Learning course on Coursera brought about the need for me to install Octave on my MacBook. Since I had only two days before I could submit my first Octave assignment without any penalty, I decided to use the simplest method to get Octave running on my MacBook.

This post documents the steps that I took to install Octave on my MacBook via Homebrew.

An easy way to install Raspberry Pi operating system on a Mac

I am more biased towards a graphical user interface when I need to install a Raspberry Pi operating system on my MacBook Pro.

This post documents how I can use Etcher to install a Raspberry Pi operating system on my Mac.