Part 1: A Raspberry Pi internet server on LoRes Mesh

Your login details

Wed, 03 Sep 2025 09:00:00 +1000

You’re a Node Steward, perhaps not the only one who will help administer this LoRes Node. You’re going to need some login credentials that you keep secure.

Nerd humour based on the 1986 game, The Legend of Zelda. Art by Nadeer.

A username and password

To log into this node, you’re going to want a username and password. While it might be tempting to use the username node_steward, it’s worth considering that there would ideally be multiple stewards of a node, to help keep things running smoothly. If someone stops volunteering as a node steward, we want to be able to easily remove them from the system. We might also want ways of logging which user does what, to provide transparency to our community.

Custom SD card imaging

Wed, 03 Sep 2025 09:00:00 +1000

Here we’ll setup an SD card ready to run your Raspberry Pi the way we want. It’ll contain the specific details for your login, your wifi, timezone, and so on.

So the MicroSD card that you’re going to insert into a Raspberry Pi needs to be loaded with the operating system that will run the Pi.

We’re going to use Ubuntu Linux for this.

Logging in and initial setup

Wed, 03 Sep 2025 09:00:00 +1000

Let’s fire up our Raspberry Pi, log in using ssh, and make sure it’s ready to go.

Power up the Pi

Put the SD Card that you just setup into the little slot on the end of the Raspberry Pi, and plug a power supply into the USB-C slot on the Pi.

It’s little light should flicker red for a bit, and then when it’s working, turn green.

Finding the Pi on your network

Since your Pi should already have your Wi-Fi credential, it will have connected to that network too. Make sure that you dev computer is connected to the same Wi-Fi network, and then we can check that the Pi is available at the expected hostname. In a terminal, try:

Connecting via ethernet cable (Optional)

Wed, 03 Sep 2025 09:00:00 +1000

Using your PI as a web server will go more smoothly over a wire, but it’s note required if you don’t have a router that supports it.

Now is a great time to consider connecting our Raspberry Pi to our router via an ethernet cable, rather than over Wi-Fi. Many home routers support both. You can check if yours does by seeing if it has little square sockets for a modular connector on the back. Most routers have one socket for the input line - possibly an ethernet cable to a modem, or perhaps the router is also a modem and it has some other sort of input cable (phone line, fibre cable, co-axial, etc). Often, they also have a set of output lines, maybe numbered, perhaps four or eight of them.

Setting up a Firewall

Mon, 25 May 2026 09:00:00 +1000

Let’s lock our server down so that no one can access services we aren’t meaning to expose.

A firewall is software that allows or prevents incoming and outgoing network traffic on a machine. For many of us, firewalls were often a black art, more likely to cause problems than prevent them. Got a problem on your machine? Try turning off the firewall.

Uncomplicated Firewall (or ufw) makes it simple enough that adding this extra layer of protection is easy to do, no matter what your skill level. This step is optional, but highly recommended. The ufw tool comes installed by default on Ubuntu Linux. This article is based on this excellent Uncomplicated Firewall Reference article by Dejan Panovski.

Accessing our Pi from the internet

Wed, 03 Sep 2025 09:00:00 +1000

Our goal here is to host software for our neighbours and community, so we’re going to need to expose our Raspberry Pi to the internet.

This can get a little tricky to give clear instructions on, because it’s different for every brand of home router, and also the type of internet connection you have can impact options here.

Your public IP address

Finding your IP

On the internet, each computer that can receive connections is uniquely identified by an IP address (Internet Protocol address). All the computers, phones, robot vacuum cleaners and whatever else on your home network do not generally have public IP addresses (they have local IP addresses on your home network so they can reach each other).