Raspberry Pi Project

I started this small project in early 2025 to have somewhere to store data and documents that I needed to access from both my computers. It quickly transformed into something much more than just a simple sharing system.

I started a personal journal in Obsidian to keep track of the setup and now I want to share it here. My server is affectionately called databerry and will be referenced as such.

Hardware

• Raspberry Pi 4 Starter Kit:
  • Raspberry Pi 4 4GB
  • Power supply
  • Official case
  • Micro HDMI to HDMI cable
  • 64GB SD memory card
  • Aluminum heatsink
• Ethernet cable
• Kingspec SSD 512 GB 2.5'' SATA III
• SSD case

Operating system

Raspberry Pi OS Lite (64-bit) - based on Debian Bookworm

Note: I tried to update it to the newer Debian Trixie but I had compatibility issues, so for now I will keep this configuration.

You can download this and many more options with the Raspberry Pi Imager. Install it on your personal machine using sudo apt install rpi-imager in a terminal window on Linux systems, or download .deb, .exe, or .dmg packages depending on your OS.

I prefer the Lite version since I would not use the Desktop environment anyway. It is possible to configure a bunch of options before "baking the pi", such as username and password. If you decide not to do so, the default option would be

• Username: pi
• Password: raspberrypi

It is possible to set up also rsa public-private pair keys for connecting during this procedure. Once the system is booted on the SD, just insert the card in the Pi and connect via ssh using your username and password.

Software

• OpenMediaVault
• Docker
• Pi-hole
• PiVPN
• fail2ban
• Jellyfin