Raspberry Pi received!

I received my Raspberry Pi today (B Model, 256 MB RAM).

I've tested it quickly with the Raspbian distribution, It works fine: serious matters start there!

Domains Names Reservation

I never reserved any domains before this project and I was surprised to look that domains are not so expensive that I thought.

For 7,16€, I can reserve an domain adress for one year.

Another question I had about domain reservation was the Whois registration. I haven't any terrible secret to hide, but I dont want to show my physical adress to the entiere world. I have found the OwO (OVH Whois Obfuscateur) service form the OVH provider. With that service, only my name can be showed in the whois server, and the postal adress is the adress of the registar.

With that price and services (and too much enthousiasm) I have decided to buy not 1 but 5 domain names:

• error418.org
• error418.net
• error418.fr (maybe for a french version of this blog)

and beacause I'm a bit crazy, 2 less good domains

• 418error.net
• htcpcp.net

Impact on the budget: -35,80€

Domain name activation was very quick, but I'll will explain their configuration in another post.

And the winner is Rasperry Pi

http://www.raspberrypi.org/

I have choosen my hardware platform:

The Toshiba Libretto is to big to fit in a standard Teapot, and I don't want to unmount it.

TP-Link router are sold around 35-40$ on chineses websites, but the delivery delay may be long, and the platform looks less powerfull.

I have found some Raspberry Pi to sell in France on Ebay at 36,5€ (+3,5€ Delivery cost)... so it will be my hardware platform. It can run Linux easily, so it is an perfect base for a small web server. I saw many project far more ambitious that mine on the very active official Raspberry Pi forum. I think it will be easy to find help and documentation.

I hope receiving it next week.

Looking for the right server platform

At this point, I'm thinking about 3 solutions for the server solution:

1. Reuse my old Toshiba Libretto 70CT: I realy like this awesome tiny machine but I dont use it any more. It's a true laptop with a Pentium processor running Windows 95. I Only need to find a 16 bits PCMCIA network interface but I'm not sure it can fit in a Teapot.
   
   
2. Buying an Raspberry Pi. This fashion card seems to be supported by a big community. I'm sure it can be a good, and more modern solution, but it's still difficult to find those cards.
   
   
3. Building an OpenWRT solution based on an TP-LINK router like the MR3020 or the MR11U. Cheap, easy to find and supported by the community of PirateBoxes projects.

Specifications and requirements

Like any project, this project will start with an initiating phase. What I want exactly do, and how will I do it?

For the first version of this project, I don't want to be too ambitious. The teapot will be a simple web server hosting an Error 418 html page. Maybe it can host the blog too, but I'm not sure it will be a good idea.

Hardware specifications

The hardware system is divided in two parts:

-the teapot

-the server

The teapot

The teapot have to be small enough to have an good WAF. A to bad WAF may cancel the entire project.

The teapot have to be big enough to support the server.

The teapot don't need to be used to brew tea.

The server

The teapot-server will be hosted at home, with my personnal Internet connection.

It will use an Ethernet connexion, as I don't like wifi.

Software specifications

Operating system and software may be open source, but it's not an strict constaint.

Budget

The budget for this project will be between 50€ and 100€ for buying hardware parts (including teapot and server) and domain name reservation.

Timeline

The deadline for the project is 2012-12-21: I really want to plug the teapot-server before the end of the world.

Error 418 - I'm a Teapot

I start this blog about my personal project around the famous 418 error code. My goal is to improve my technical skills and to train my english language with a fun project.

This error code is specified in then HTCPCP protocol, referenced in RFC 2324 of the IETF. This RFC, published April 1, 1998, is obviously a joke, but is an interesting start point.

This document, is written with a very technical style like other RFC and describes a control protocol for coffee pot. It provides a complete set of queries and error codes, including the famous code 418 intended to be returned in the case where a user would attempt to brew coffee with a teapot.

So I decided to start a small geek project: implementation of the HTCPCP protocol, at least the 418 error.

Yes, I want to connect a teapot over the Internet.