HUBZILLA
Run a Pi Zero 2W social Fediverse server
We go boldly where no man has gone before… well, David Rutland has, into the Fediverse with just his trusty Raspbery Pi Zero 2 W.
OUR EXPERT
David Rutland used to have a fine head of hair until he tried running a server off his new Pi Zero 2 W. Now he looks like this.
QUICK TIP
If you feel like your feed isn’t updating quickly enough and you’re left out of conversations, it’s because cron is set up to check for new posts every 10 minutes. Change this with sudo crontab -e.
T he idea was simple. We sat around a table in the socially distanced (by about 400 miles) Linux Format-distributed HQ looking at the specs of the new Raspberry Pi Zero 2 and someone said, “I bet you could run a half decent social media server off that.” “You’re on," said the editor. “I want 1,500 words by the first half of next week.”
It was a couple of hours later when it was discovered that the launch day specs – eagerly repeated in almost all online publications – were not quite right. The Raspberry Pi OS would not have a 64-bit kernel on the £13.20 Pi Zero 2… at least, not for a while.
Undeterred, we discovered a workaround that enabled us to use a second Raspberry Pi (a 4B in this case) to assist in getting the 64-bit version of Ubuntu server up and running. The idea is simple: load an SD card with the relevant OS, bang it in the 4B to complete installation, run updates, and then return your newly prepped card to the Zero. In total, it took about an hour.
With working 64-bit hardware balanced precariously atop the couch, it was time to decide what sort of shortlived social media enterprise we wanted to run.