Well that wasn't so hard ... (part 1)

Here we go then...

First off is to get both old and new machines up to scratch. A swift visit to the download site, https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/ to grab buster and i note with some little annoyance that the "lite" version of buster has gone from the page in the last couple of weeks, leaving me with only the "desktop" version. Oh well.

With the download saved, it's off to grab what has been renamed the "Balena Etcher" from https://www.balena.io/etcher/ to burn the zip files to SD. And with lightning speed, we're up. I see the new desktop even sorts out the wi-fi connection for you these days, things certainly have moved on (!)

So, with both Pi's booting, time to sort out the static IP address. It's a doddle really, as long as you make sure you are not using those predictive network names and stick to the old school "wlan0" or "eth0". And a swift "ifconfig" will tell you if you are. With that sorted, all you now need do is edit /etc/dhcpcd.conf using sudo <your favourite editor> and set it up as follows

interface eth0 (or whatever)
static ip_address=192.168.0.100/24 (or whatever you need)
static routers=192.168.0.1 (or whatever your router's address is)
static domain_name_servers=192.168.0.1 8.8.8.8 (or whatever)

The above works for me. My router is set to 192.168.0.1 and resolves domain names using my ISP's server. The second set of numbers is Google's DNS and let's be honest if they wont resolve a number they probably don't want you to find it (probably because whoever it is isn't paying them enough of a bribe.

It's Been A While

It's Been A While ...

Twelve Years, in fact. 

It was 2008 when I decided to put up a set of pages to document the fun I had trying to get a low powered "web book" to work with Arch Linux instead of the slightly modified port of Ubuntu it came with from "Carphone Warehouse". My efforts there came to an end when the Arch Community decided such hardware was so "yesterday" they wanted no more to do with it. And to be honest I've moved on to other problems too.

It was I guess inevitable that someone who actually wanted to keep a low power, battery guzzling mini PC with a bug in its firmware that effectively broke it for all normal flavours of X Windows going instead of throwing it in the skip where it belonged, was going to be drawn to the Raspberry Pi. 

In fact, I was one of the earliest recipients of a Model A from RS Components and I've had it running a mini web server here in the office for years now.

Well, the day job has moved on, and these days I build dot Net Core things,  

And this is where this blog comes in. 

I've recently got my hands on a Rasbpberry Pi Model 3B which I have successfully fired up with a development version of MicroS**t's IOT, but I recently got wind of the possibility of running dot Net Core Applications under Raspbian. 

So that's my goal. Or rather, here's the bullet points

• Get the Raspberry Pi 3B up and running with raspbian in place of the Model A.
• That will mean configuring it inside my office network with a Static IP Address
• Install whatever I must to support running dot Net Core Console, Windowed and  Web applications
• Update / Modify my (alas Windows 10) development environment to support production of such console, Windowed and Web applications.
• Publish such from my development environment to the Pi
• Document various dot Net hints, tips and eclectica I come across in this process.

And as if that was not torture enough, I am really, REALLY keen to see if I can get Chart.JS and some sort of grid solution up and running, in a Razor Pages 3.1 run time environment.

This might be fun. Or it might be hell.