this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2025
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Hiya!

I have a Raspberry Pi 4B set up as a print server, so it has to run 24/7. But it irks me that it's mostly idling.

I'd move my website to it, but I don't want to deal with it being open to the internet. The same goes for an e-mail server.

I was also thinking of running a Minecraft server on it. (Being able to play on the same world from different devices is kinda cool.) Alas, my RPi only has 4 GiBs of RAM. I worry that such a load would interfere with the print server.

Any ideas what I could run on it?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

I run a asterisk PJSIP VOIP server on my raspberry pi 5 8GB. I had to use the git and build and recompile and manually load all PJSIP modules because for some reason I couldn't even find an asterisk package on apt db for ARM64 for some fucking reason. Also had to containerize it within a docker because the shit couldn't properly compile without interfering with native system binaries. Shit is so fucking goated and can do PSTN via twilio trunking (call numbers outside of the phone server's number base so basically anyone as long as you make the phone numbers parsed in extensions.conf for each country you wanna call XD). Currently works within LAN but I am planning on making it accessible over the internet using my domain and a tunnel for UDP if possible or just a VPN since my router is being a removed with SIP packets rn. I am having trouble with that part but once it's done I can quite literally ditch any phone plan and use it. Twilio hardly even charges shit for voice rates 🤣🤣🤣. You could also self host your domain + email providing service and then connect that to thunderbird for full schizo-level privacy or sum shit. That's what I do to ditch web-email BS

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 days ago

Another vote for PiHole. It keeps your home network cleaner by ignoring the ads.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago

You could pihole

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 days ago

On my Rpi4B I run syncthing 24/7. It acts as my sync hub. All other machines are connected to it.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago

Some great light lightweight apps for a 4GB Pi:

  • Homeassistant
  • Fresh RSS
  • Paperless NGX
  • Syncthing
  • PiHole or Adguard home
  • Syncthing
[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago

PiHole is a pretty light load, as are Home Assistant and Music Assistant. Frigate starts to make some heat, so don't expect to get a full blown video classification / recording system.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago
[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 days ago

Paperless ngx

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

So I have a smart plug set up on my printer and print server (old HP 4P with separate network print server.

I have NodeRed watching my CUPS queues via HTTP scraping, and if it sees a job in the queue for that printer, it turns on the print server and printer via the smartplug over wifi. I have seen someone link a project that does something similiar.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago

Get yourself and adsb antenna and feed flightaware, flightradar24, and adsbexchange. Help track the skies!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago

let it run dwarf fortress from within the terminal, then ssh into it from wherever you are so you can play df from anywhere in the world. i did this at work.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago

You could also setup a git repo for your config files. That way you could revert changes, if you break something.

If you don't want do open your pi up to the internet you could take a look at tailscale. I use this script on my laptop and home pc to share files with sshfs while having any other traffic go through mullvad. Set this up on your pi with it as an exit node and you basically have access from anywhere.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

Check out BOINC: https://boinc.berkeley.edu/

Raspberry Pi I'm not sure if it's worth it. But in short you can advance some science with spare CPU hours. Should be possible to limit it so it doesn't heat up and use just a bit of the cycles depending on other load...

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago (4 children)

AdGuard Home (I prefer it to PiHole)

OtterWiki

Wireguard

Forgejo

Tandoor

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

Airsonic music server... There are a few quirks getting it all set up properly, but once it works, it just seems to work forever. Samba file sharing server. Also miniDLNA server can make it easy to watch your movie collection on a tv. The airsonic DLNA doesn't seem to be working currently. I also have a few mastodon bots running from a Pi4. Also could run a tor relay node, which would make it so it's less idle. I have a lot of stuff on my Pi4 and it is still mostly idle most of the time. Thats fine though. For me it's not a huge problem, since overall, my goal is to make it use as little power as possible for all those things. I think thats the whole point is to really use the most lightweight computer that can do what you need. If you just need the print server, you could always get a lower power Pi so you can really optimize how much power needs to be used and maybe even do some sort of Wake on LAN setup so it can be sleeping while not in use.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago

qbittorrent (docker) 😁😎

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago (3 children)

Jellyfin music server. It needs about 1.2 GB of RAM for itself, plus the system.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

You can run an (emulated) IBM mainframe on it!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

I use my Pi 4B as a DVR for movies and OTA television (MythTV).

There are other tools that handle playback better (OSMC/Kodi, etc) but Myth's configuration and handling of recording schedules is incredibly powerful. Conflict management works well and it can record multiple streams off the same tuner so conflicts are reduced in the first place.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I run AdGuard Home, WireGuard and a couple of other things on my 4B, all in Docker.

I used to run HomeAssistant on our for a while, but they stopped supporting that architecture (armhf?). Also used to run Unbound on it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago (2 children)

HomeAssistant is still supported on Pi4b

It's support for the rpi3 that is getting fased out.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Another idea: dokuwiki, to document your process setting up various service for future reference

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

mine is my reverse proxy, using the nginx proxy manager docker install method

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

As a general thing because I found myself trying to justify my Gear Acquisition Syndrome -- it's a good idea to split services across devices, rather than having some monolithic home server (which is where most people start). That way if one box goes down, it doesn't take down your whole stack.

If you have some machines scattered about doing different things, it might be time to consider logically grouping services and splitting them across that hardware.

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