Enable an RPi to serve as an ioT gateway for our P2 Hardware - while dedicating only 2 pins for serial communication
By default our Raspberry Pi OS that we chose does not come with the web server installed. However it is very easy to install it.
Before we do any new software installation let's make sure we have the latest updates to our existing installed software. Remember the upd command you installed. Let's run that now:
$ upd
+ sudo apt-get update
Hit:1 http://archive.raspberrypi.org/debian bullseye InRelease
Hit:2 http://raspbian.raspberrypi.org/raspbian bullseye InRelease
Reading package lists... Done
+ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.Ok, ours is up-to-date.
Now let's install the web server and it's documentation:
$ sudo apt-get install apache2 apache2-doc php
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
apache2-bin apache2-data apache2-utils libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libapache2-mod-php7.4 php-common php7.4 php7.4-cli php7.4-common php7.4-json php7.4-opcache php7.4-readline libaprutil1-ldap liblua5.3-0
Suggested packages:
apache2-suexec-pristine | apache2-suexec-custom php-pear
The following NEW packages will be installed:
apache2 apache2-bin apache2-data apache2-doc apache2-utils libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap liblua5.3-0 libapache2-mod-php7.4 php php-common php7.4 php7.4-cli php7.4-common php7.4-json php7.4-opcache php7.4-readline
0 upgraded, 10 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 6,260 kB of archives.
After this operation, 32.6 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] (Simply press return at the [Y/n] prompt to proceed with the install.)
Let's adjust the web page folders so that creating files at the pi user will not interfere with the pages being dimsplayed:
ls -lh /var/www/
sudo chgrp www-data /var/www # set group to the web server group
sudo chmod g+s /var/www # set sticky bit so files created under here will be set to group
sudo chown -R pi:www-data /var/www/html/ # recursively change owner of files/folder within
sudo chmod g+s /var/www/html
sudo chmod -R 770 /var/www/html/
ls -lh /var/www/
sudo service apache2 restart # restart server to pick up latest changesLet's adjust the apache2 setup so that .php suffixed entry pages in folder just work (without needing the .php suffix)
Let's edit the /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf file (using sudo vi {filename} of course) Make the following content adjustment:
DocumentRoot /var/www/html # locate this line
DirectoryIndex index.html index.htm index.php # add this line !!Once this line is added, then restart the server to pick up the change:
sudo service apache2 restart # restart server to pick up latest changesThis configuration addition allows us to now have .../folder/index.php files as our top-level files under /var/www/html/ this makes it real easy to support many projects as we simply create a new /var/www/html/{newFolder} and then create /var/www/html/{newFolder}/index.php and place our new web-page content in this new file.
When browsing to your new project your URL looks someting like: http://{mypihostname|orIpAddress/{newFolder}
Pretty nice, right?
Create a simple but useful PHP test file. Let's change to our web server directory:
cd /var/www/htmlNow create the file info.php in this directory. The file should contain the following 3 lines:
<?php
phpinfo()
?>Now let's test both the server and the php execution under the server:
Browse to http://{fullrpihostname|or ip address}/ - this should display the default web page:
Next, browse to http://{fullrpihostname|or ip address}/info.php - this should display the new PHP Info page:
If you are seeing these pages the Apache2 web server and the PHP interpreter packages are installed and working. You are now ready to play with the new Web Served P2 data DEMOs!
If you like my work and/or this has helped you in some way then feel free to help me out for a couple of ☕'s or 🍕 slices!
Raspberry Pi is registered trademark of Raspberry Pi (Trading) Ltd.
Parallax, Propeller Spin, and the Parallax and Propeller Hat logos are trademarks of Parallax Inc., dba Parallax Semiconductor
This project is a community project not for commercial use.
This project is in no way affiliated with, authorized, maintained, sponsored or endorsed by Raspberry Pi (Trading) Ltd. or any of its affiliates or subsidiaries.
Likewise, This project is in no way affiliated with, authorized, maintained, sponsored or endorsed by Parallax Inc., dba Parallax Semiconductor or any of its affiliates or subsidiaries.
Licensed under the MIT License.
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