pi

Bought a pi Zero 2W model to configure as my server for the arduino devices to be used in the farm at Thenkodipakkam .

Initially installed and used Debian based Raspberry Pi OS.

But later on 2024-08-21 tried to install Alpine Linux in it. Now back to pi OS as on 2024-08-22. Running on Alpine Linux since many months now.

pihole

Installed and configured pihole from testing repository in mid-July 2025.

For pihole unbound is used as DNS server here.

• disabled blacklist from unbound
• updated /etc/apk/repositories to include @testing http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/testing ↗
• added etc/unbound/unbound.conf.d/pi-hole.conf file from https://docs.pi-hole.net/guides/dns/unbound ↗
• disabled the entire server section in /etc/unbound/unbound.conf file

The above changes have been committed using and should not cause issue when rebooting.

The following has to be done after every reboot.

$ doas apk update
$ doas apk add pihole@testing
$ doas addgroup pihole $USER
$ doas service pihole start

• Access web interface at pi.hole
• Add custom DNS server for unbound as per https://docs.pi-hole.net/guides/dns/unbound/ ↗
• Restart unbound service
• Add stevenblack list from http://sbc.io/hosts/hosts ↗ and update gravity to load the list.
• https://git.sr.ht/~prabuanand/dotfiles/blob/master/home/prabu/.local/share/mydnd.txt ↗
• In expert mode, disable logging from the admin panel. Save the settings.

system state before installing pihole

prabu@pizero2w ~> df -m
Filesystem     1M-blocks   Used Available Use% Mounted on
tmpfs                225     77       148  35% /

prabu@pizero2w ~> free -m
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:            449         157         110          77         182         205

Top applications based on memory usage - output of smem
unbound 114780 kB
wpa_supplicant 6412 kB
fish 6324 kB

Top applications based on memory usage - output of smem after disabling stevenblack host file
unbound 25412 kB
wpa_supplicant 6412 kB
fish 6324 kB

prabu@pizero2w ~> free -m
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:            449          69         198          77         182         292

system state after installing and running pihole

prabu@pizero2w ~> free -m
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:            449          65         138         130         247         244

prabu@pizero2w ~> df -m
Filesystem     1M-blocks   Used Available Use% Mounted on
tmpfs                225    119       107  53% /

Top applications based on memory usage - output of smem
unbound 15876 kB
pihole-FTL 10332 kB
fish 6708 kB
wpa_supplicant 6412 kB

lbu & mem Usage

every lbu usage takes quite good amount of available memory

pizero2W:~$ df -m
Filesystem     1M-blocks  Used Available Use% Mounted on
devtmpfs              10     0        10   0% /dev
shm                  209     3       207   1% /dev/shm
/dev/mmcblk0       61106   153     60953   1% /media/mmcblk0
tmpfs                209   102       107  49% /
tmpfs                 84     1        84   1% /run
/dev/loop0            51    51         0 100% /.modloop
pizero2W:~$ free -m
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:            417          56         147         104         213         246
Swap:             0           0           0
pizero2W:~$ ls -lh /var/lib/pihole/
total 7.2M
drwxr-x--- 2 pihole pihole   80 Jan  1  1970 config_backups
-rw-r--r-- 1 pihole pihole 5.5K Sep 23 18:05 dnsmasq.conf
-rw-rw-r-- 1 pihole pihole 6.1M Nov  6 21:05 gravity.db
drwxr-xr-x 2 pihole pihole   80 Jan  1  1970 gravity_backups
-rw-rw-r-- 1 pihole pihole 100K Nov  6 21:05 gravity_old.db
drwxr-xr-x 2 pihole pihole   60 Jan  1  1970 hosts
drwxrwxr-x 2 pihole pihole  100 Jan  1  1970 listsCache
-rw-r----- 1 pihole pihole 348K Sep 23 18:04 pihole-FTL.db
-rw-r----- 1 pihole pihole  32K Sep 23 18:04 pihole-FTL.db-shm
-rw-r----- 1 pihole pihole 592K Nov  6 21:55 pihole-FTL.db-wal
pizero2W:~$ doas lbu st
doas (prabu@pizero2W) password:
U var/lib/pihole/pihole-FTL.db-wal
U home/prabu/.ash_history
pizero2W:~$ doas lbu ci
pizero2W:~$ df -m
Filesystem     1M-blocks  Used Available Use% Mounted on
devtmpfs              10     0        10   0% /dev
shm                  209     3       207   1% /dev/shm
/dev/mmcblk0       61106   156     60950   1% /media/mmcblk0
tmpfs                209   134        75  65% /
tmpfs                 84     1        84   1% /run
/dev/loop0            51    51         0 100% /.modloop

pizero2W:/tmp$ doas du -d 1 -h
3.8M	./lbu-2662-1762446369-GvY8iSeP01
3.8M	./lbu-2622-1762446336-DkeX8ov563
25M	./lbu-2622-1762446335-eYxIL8L7go
0	./.X11-unix
0	./.ICE-unix
33M	.
pizero2W:/tmp$ df -m
Filesystem     1M-blocks  Used Available Use% Mounted on
devtmpfs              10     0        10   0% /dev
shm                  209     3       207   1% /dev/shm
/dev/mmcblk0       61106   156     60950   1% /media/mmcblk0
tmpfs                209   134        75  65% /
tmpfs                 84     1        84   1% /run
/dev/loop0            51    51         0 100% /.modloop
pizero2W:/tmp$ doas reboot
pizero2W:~$ df -m
Filesystem     1M-blocks  Used Available Use% Mounted on
devtmpfs              10     0        10   0% /dev
shm                  209     3       207   1% /dev/shm
/dev/mmcblk0       61106   156     60950   1% /media/mmcblk0
tmpfs                209   102       108  49% /
tmpfs                 84     1        84   1% /run
/dev/loop0            51    51         0 100% /.modloop
pizero2W:~$ df -m /tmp/
Filesystem     1M-blocks  Used Available Use% Mounted on
tmpfs                209   102       108  49% /
pizero2W:~$ du -d 1 -h /tmp/
0	/tmp/.X11-unix
0	/tmp/.ICE-unix
0	/tmp/

Headless Alpine

• https://www.reddit.com/r/AlpineLinux/comments/198tvjt/headless_raspberry_pi_zero_w_wont_connect_to_wifi/ ↗
• https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi#Preparation ↗
• https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Alpine_on_ARM ↗ ??
• https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Classic_install_or_sys_mode_on_Raspberry_Pi ↗

Downloaded the OS alpine-rpi-3.20.2-aarch64.tar.gz for pi Zero 2W: Dowloaded the headless.apkvol.tar.gz and 3 sample files from:

https://github.com/macmpi/alpine-linux-headless-bootstrap ↗

The following steps has to be done to prepare the SD card first on any windows/linux PC.

# mkdir /mnt/pi
# mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/pi

Go into the first partition (fat16).

root@homepc2 /m/pi# tar xvf ~prabu/Downloads/alpine-rpi-3.20.2-aarch64.tar.gz

After extracting the tar file to the SD card, create and edit the usercfg.txt file as follows:

root@homepc2 /m/pi# touch usercfg.txt
root@homepc2 /m/pi# cat usercfg.txt
enable_uart=1
gpu_mem=32

Now, copy the above 3 files in addition to headless.apkovl.tar.gz to the root of sdcard. The headless should be in the tar.gz format and it need not be modified.

Now eject the SD card and insert it into the pi and power it on. Once logged in, the below login screen appears:

  Alpine Linux headless bootstrap v1.2 by macmpi
...

Now proceed with the next stage of installation. Since next step requires more packages tried adding apkrepos and the inbuilt wget from buysbox generated below error, but the issue got resolved after installing wget.

alpine-headless:~# setup-apkrepos
200D7DA87F000000:error:0A000086:SSL routines:tls_post_process_server_certificate:certificate verify failed:ssl/statem/statem_clnt.c:2091:
ssl_client: SSL_connect
wget: error getting response: Connection reset by peer
20AD2EA77F000000:error:0A000086:SSL routines:tls_post_process_server_certificate:certificate verify failed:ssl/statem/statem_clnt.c:2091:
ssl_client: SSL_connect
alpine-headless:~# apk add wget
alpine-headless:~# lbu commit

With the above step and a reboot, the pi is usable, but works in diskless mode. To set up the OS in the System Disk Mode, have to proceed as per below wiki: https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Classic_install_or_sys_mode_on_Raspberry_Pi#Update_boot_partition_(keep_alpine-rpi*_image_layout) ↗

Formatted the second partiton i.e root. Still the installation did not work as per wiki:

pizero1:~# apk add e2fsprogs
pizero1:~# mkfs.ext4 /dev/mmcblk0p2
root@pizero1 ~# mount /dev/mmcblk0p2 /mnt
root@pizero1 ~# mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 /mnt/boot
mount: mounting /dev/mmcblk0p1 on /mnt/boot failed: Resource busy

Due to above error, have to proceed without mounting boot partition on rootfs. The above missing step causes quite bit of hassle for moving around boot files as can be seen below:

In the next step, installation stops due to a well known error “ext4 is not supported. Only supported are: vfat”

Based on below issue, have to use the flag export FORCE_BOOTFS=1 to proceed. https://gitlab.alpinelinux.org/alpine/aports/-/issues/12353#note_152955 ↗

root@pizero1 ~# mount /dev/mmcblk0p2 /mnt
root@pizero1 ~# export FORCE_BOOTFS=1
root@pizero1 ~# setup-disk -m sys /mnt
ext4 is not supported. Only supported are: vfat
Continuing at your own risk.
Installing system on /dev/mmcblk0p2:
100% █████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████
==> initramfs: creating /boot/initramfs-rpi for 6.6.45-0-rpi
/sbin/update-raspberrypi-bootloader: INFO: replaced config.txt and saved config.txt.old
Configured kernel vmlinuz-rpi / initramfs-rpi

root@pizero1 ~# mount -o remount,rw /media/mmcblk0p1

The below steps are nearly exact, except for one step as per wiki:

pizero1:/mnt# rm -f /media/mmcblk0p1/boot/*
pizero1:/mnt# rm boot/boot
pizero1:/mnt# rm -rf /media/mmcblk0p1/*
pizero1:/mnt# mv boot/* /media/mmcblk0p1/

The last step is different from wiki. Pay close attention to your ‘pwd’ before issusing the above commands. Now verify the important files and confirm they are correct, before rebooting the pi:

prabu@pizero1 ~> cat /etc/fstab
UUID=6d58c75c-4069-41ed-950e-951dd3f81117 / ext4 rw,relatime 0 1
/dev/mmcblk0p1 /boot vfat defaults 0 0 tmpfs /tmp tmpfs nosuid,nodev 0
0 pizero1:/mnt# cat /media/mmcblk0p1/cmdline.txt
root=UUID=6d58c75c-4069-41ed-950e-951dd3f81117
modules=sd-mod,usb-storage,ext4 quiet rootfstype=ext4

Inspite of all the trouble, unable to get the camera to work in Alpine Linux . Referred below sites and more:

• https://github.com/wjtje/libcamera-apps-alpine ↗
• https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/46851/raspberry-pi-2-camera-and-alpinelinux ↗

So ended up going back to Raspberry Pi OS aka Raspbian on 2024-08-22. Even here, after wasting a good of time trying to install Pi OS using Alpine, finally went back to Arch to use Raspberry Pi Imager.

Use serial access

prabu@pizero2W ~> doas mount -o remount,rw /media/mmcblk0/
prabu@pizero2W ~> cat /media/mmcblk0/usercfg.txt
dtoverlay=dwc2,dr_mode=peripheral
prabu@pizero2W ~ [1]> cat /media/mmcblk0/cmdline.txt
modules=loop,squashfs,sd-mod,usb-storage quiet console=tty1
prabu@pizero2W ~> doas vi /media/mmcblk0/cmdline.txt
prabu@pizero2W ~> cat /media/mmcblk0/cmdline.txt
modules=loop,squashfs,sd-mod,usb-storage,g_serial quiet console=ttyGS0,115200 console=tty1
prabu@pizero2W ~> cat /media/mmcblk0/cmdline.txt
modules=loop,squashfs,sd-mod,usb-storage,g_serial console=ttyGS0,115200 console=tty1

cutdown bootloader

prabu@pizero2W /m/mmcblk0> doas apk add raspberrypi-bootloader-cutdown doas (prabu@pizero2W) password: (1/2) Installing raspberrypi-bootloader-common (1.20250820-r0) (2/2) Installing raspberrypi-bootloader-cutdown (1.20250820-r0) busybox-1.37.0-r24.trigger: Executing script… raspberrypi-bootloader-common-1.20250820-r0.trigger: Executing script… raspberrypi-bootloader-common-1.20250820-r0.trigger: /usr/sbin/update-raspberrypi-bootloader: WARNING: no kernel found OK: 81 MiB in 101 packages

Headless Raspberry Pi OS

To get the headless option have to pre-configure wifi, ssh and user account using Pi Imager.

Performance Tracking

On 2024-08-22 after basic OS installation

prabu@pizero1:~ $ df -m
Filesystem     1M-blocks  Used Available Use% Mounted on
udev                  73     0        73   0% /dev
tmpfs                 42     1        41   3% /run
/dev/mmcblk0p2     59628  2020     54563   4% /
tmpfs                209     1       209   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs                  5     1         5   1% /run/lock
/dev/mmcblk0p1       510    64       447  13% /boot/firmware
tmpfs                 42     0        42   0% /run/user/1000
prabu@pizero1:~ $ free -m
               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:             417         110         166           0         192         306
Swap:            199          25         174

On 2024-08-22 after system update

Added following new packages automatically: raspi-utils-core raspi-utils-dt raspi-utils-eeprom raspi-utils-otp raspinfo

prabu@pizero1:~ $ apt list --installed |wc -l
598
prabu@pizero1:~ $ free -m
               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:             417         127         125           0         215         289
Swap:            199           0         199
prabu@pizero1:~ $ df -m
Filesystem     1M-blocks  Used Available Use% Mounted on
udev                  73     0        73   0% /dev
tmpfs                 42     1        41   3% /run
/dev/mmcblk0p2     59628  2036     54546   4% /
tmpfs                209     0       209   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs                  5     1         5   1% /run/lock
/dev/mmcblk0p1       510    64       447  13% /boot/firmware
tmpfs                 42     0        42   0% /run/user/1000

On 2024-08-22 after adding Mosquitto

prabu@pizero1:~ $ apt list --installed |wc -l
603
prabu@pizero1:~ $ free -m
               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:             417         133         175           0         159         283
Swap:            199           3         196
prabu@pizero1:~ $ df -m
Filesystem     1M-blocks  Used Available Use% Mounted on
udev                  73     0        73   0% /dev
tmpfs                 42     1        41   3% /run
/dev/mmcblk0p2     59628  2038     54544   4% /
tmpfs                209     0       209   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs                  5     1         5   1% /run/lock
/dev/mmcblk0p1       510    64       447  13% /boot/firmware
tmpfs                 42     0        42   0% /run/user/1000

On 2024-08-22 after installing python-paho library based script:

prabu@pizero1 ~> apt list --installed |wc -l
612
prabu@pizero1 ~> df -m
Filesystem     1M-blocks  Used Available Use% Mounted on
udev                  73     0        73   0% /dev
tmpfs                 42     1        41   3% /run
/dev/mmcblk0p2     59628  2074     54509   4% /
tmpfs                209     0       209   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs                  5     1         5   1% /run/lock
/dev/mmcblk0p1       510    64       447  13% /boot/firmware
tmpfs                 42     0        42   0% /run/user/1000
prabu@pizero1 ~> free -m
               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:             417         125         129           0         213         291
Swap:            199          31         168

On 2024-08-23 after installing Motion

prabu@pizero1 ~ [1]> apt list --installed |wc -l
773
prabu@pizero1 ~> df -m
Filesystem     1M-blocks  Used Available Use% Mounted on
udev                  73     0        73   0% /dev
tmpfs                 42     1        41   3% /run
/dev/mmcblk0p2     59628  2480     54102   5% /
tmpfs                209     1       209   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs                  5     1         5   1% /run/lock
/dev/mmcblk0p1       510    64       447  13% /boot/firmware
tmpfs                 42     0        42   0% /run/user/1000
prabu@pizero1 ~> free -m
               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:             417         138         140           0         189         278
Swap:            199          39         160

on 2024-08-23 after successfully running motion with extra packages

prabu@pizero1 ~> apt list --installed |wc -l
859
prabu@pizero1 ~> df -m
Filesystem     1M-blocks  Used Available Use% Mounted on
udev                  73     0        73   0% /dev
tmpfs                 42     1        41   3% /run
/dev/mmcblk0p2     59628  2974     53608   6% /
tmpfs                209     1       209   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs                  5     1         5   1% /run/lock
/dev/mmcblk0p1       510    64       447  13% /boot/firmware
tmpfs                 42     0        42   0% /run/user/1000
prabu@pizero1 ~> free -m
               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:             417         192         157           0         124         224
Swap:            199          49         150

Using pi

pi camera

• https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/projects/push-button-stop-motion/2 ↗

$libcamera-hello
prabu@pizero1:~ $ libcamera-hello
[5:53:55.355012758] [2138]  INFO Camera camera_manager.cpp:313 libcamera v0.3.0+65-6ddd79b5
[5:53:55.425653823] [2141]  WARN RPiSdn sdn.cpp:40 Using legacy SDN tuning - please consider moving SDN inside rpi.denoise
[5:53:55.431520539] [2141]  INFO RPI vc4.cpp:446 Registered camera /base/soc/i2c0mux/i2c@1/ov5647@36 to Unicam device /dev/media0 and ISP device /dev/media1
[5:53:55.431666997] [2141]  INFO RPI pipeline_base.cpp:1104 Using configuration file '/usr/share/libcamera/pipeline/rpi/vc4/rpi_apps.yaml'
Preview window unavailable
Mode selection for 1296:972:12:P
    SGBRG10_CSI2P,640x480/0 - Score: 3296
    SGBRG10_CSI2P,1296x972/0 - Score: 1000
    SGBRG10_CSI2P,1920x1080/0 - Score: 1349.67
    SGBRG10_CSI2P,2592x1944/0 - Score: 1567
Stream configuration adjusted
[5:53:55.434788767] [2138]  INFO Camera camera.cpp:1183 configuring streams: (0) 1296x972-YUV420 (1) 1296x972-SGBRG10_CSI2P
[5:53:55.435402361] [2141]  INFO RPI vc4.cpp:621 Sensor: /base/soc/i2c0mux/i2c@1/ov5647@36 - Selected sensor format: 1296x972-SGBRG10_1X10 - Selected unicam format: 1296x972-pGAA

stream video

• https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=368067 ↗
• https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/computers/camera_software.html#rpicam-vid ↗

On the pi:

$ rpicam-vid -t 0 --inline --listen -o tcp://0.0.0.0:8554

On the client:

$ mpv http://192.168.1.197:8554
 (+) Video --vid=1 (h264 640x480 25.000fps)
VO: [gpu] 640x480 yuv420p

mqtt broker

The MQTT protocol is a machine-to-machine (M2M)/“Internet of Things” connectivity protocol. Designed as an extremely lightweight publish/subscribe messaging transport, it is useful for connections with remote locations where a small code footprint is required and/or network bandwidth is at a premium.

• https://randomnerdtutorials.com/how-to-install-mosquitto-broker-on-raspberry-pi/ ↗
• https://randomnerdtutorials.com/testing-mosquitto-broker-and-client-on-raspbbery-pi/ ↗

• Installation

  Installed the broker and clients

  
  prabu@pizero1:~ $ sudo apt install mosquitto mosquitto-clients
  Reading package lists... Done
  Building dependency tree... Done
  Reading state information... Done
  The following additional packages will be installed:
    libcjson1 libdlt2 libmosquitto1
  The following NEW packages will be installed:
    libcjson1 libdlt2 libmosquitto1 mosquitto mosquitto-clients
  0 upgraded, 5 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
  Need to get 655 kB of archives.
  After this operation, 1,977 kB of additional disk space will be used.
  ...
  Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/mosquitto.service → /lib/systemd/system/mosquitto.service.
  
  
  prabu@pizero1:~ $ systemctl status mosquitto.service
  ● mosquitto.service - Mosquitto MQTT Broker
  Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/mosquitto.service; enabled; preset: enabled)
       ....
  861 /usr/sbin/mosquitto -c /etc/mosquitto/mosquitto.conf
  

• mqtt user

  Created mqtt user esp32 with same password, and modified config file:

  prabu@pizero1:~ $ sudo mosquitto_passwd -c /etc/mosquitto/passwd esp32
  prabu@pizero1:~ $ cat /etc/mosquitto/mosquitto.conf
  # Place your local configuration in /etc/mosquitto/conf.d/
  #
  # A full description of the configuration file is at
  # /usr/share/doc/mosquitto/examples/mosquitto.conf.example
  per_listener_settings true
  pid_file /run/mosquitto/mosquitto.pid
  
  persistence true
  persistence_location /var/lib/mosquitto/
  
  log_dest file /var/log/mosquitto/mosquitto.log
  
  include_dir /etc/mosquitto/conf.d
  
  listener 1883
  allow_anonymous false
  password_file /etc/mosquitto/passwd
  

• testing

  Tested with sub and pub on the Alpine Linux :

  prabu@homepc2 /d/d/p/l/pizero> mosquitto_sub -h 192.168.1.197 -u esp32 -P esp32 -t "pi/#"
  get_status
  prabu@homepc2 ~> mosquitto_pub -h 192.168.1.197 -u esp32 -P esp32 -t "pi/control" -m "get_status"
  

  On issuing the mosquitto_pub command, saw the message on mosquitto_sub window.

mqtt-paho

The Paho Python Client provides a client class with support for MQTT v5.0, MQTT v3.1.1, and v3.1 on Python 3.7+. It also provides some helper functions to make publishing one off messages to an MQTT server very straightforward. https://github.com/eclipse/paho.mqtt.python ↗

The current implementation consists of two files:

The python script that makes use of Paho python client to respond to mqtt pub requests. The script must be an executable file. The following two python packages were installed for this script:

prabu@pizero1 ~> sudo apt install python3-paho-mqtt python3-psutil
prabu@pizero1 ~/backup> ls -l /usr/local/bin/
-rwxr-xr-x 1   root root 4936 Aug 22 20:22 mqtt_paho_client.py*

MQTT Paho Service file:

prabu@pizero1 ~/backup> cat etc/systemd/system/mqtt_paho.service
[Unit]
Description=MQTT Paho Service
After=network.target

[Service]
User=prabu
# Replace with the directory containing your script
WorkingDirectory=/usr/local/bin
ExecStart=/usr/bin/python /usr/local/bin/mqtt_paho_client.py
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target⏎

Based on the above mqtt_paho_client.py code, when mqtt client publishes the get_status message , all the subscribed mqtt clients receive the below reply:

prabu@homepc2 ~> mosquitto_pub -h 192.168.1.197 -u esp32 -P esp32 -t "pi/control" -m "get_status"
prabu@homepc2 ~> mosquitto_sub -h 192.168.1.197 -u esp32 -P esp32 -t "pi/#"
Current status of pizero1 at 20:36:16
CPU Usage: 0.2%
Memory Usage: 28.5%
CPU Temp: 45.1'C
Disk Usage: 3.7%
Uptime: 3:33:00
Network: 192.168.1.197
Processes: 139
Load Average: 1m 0.18, 5m 0.20, 15m 0.13

motion

The latest released version on motion website is 4.7 and then there is also 4.6. 4.7 is not yet available for aarch64 platform of bookworm.

prabu@pizero1 ~ [1]> sudo apt list motion Listing... Done
motion/stable 4.5.1-2 arm64
prabu@pizero1 ~ [1]> sudo apt install motion
0 upgraded, 161 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 133 MB of archives.
After this operation, 422 MB of additional disk space will be used.

At the end of installation, found the below messages: Fixed them and checked the service status:

Setting up motion (4.5.1-2) ...
Adding group `motion' (GID 112) ...
Done.
adduser: Warning: The home dir /var/lib/motion you specified already exists.
Adding system user `motion' (UID 107) ...
Adding new user `motion' (UID 107) with group `motion' ...
adduser: The home directory `/var/lib/motion' already exists.  Not touching this directory.
adduser: Warning: The home directory `/var/lib/motion' does not belong to the user you are currently creating.
Adding user `motion' to group `video' ...
Done.
Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/motion.service → /lib/systemd/system/motion.service.
Setting up ffmpeg (8:5.1.6-0+deb12u1+rpt1) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.11.2-2) ...

Broadcast message from systemd-journald@pizero1 (Fri 2024-08-23 14:50:55 IST):

motion[6672]: [0:motion] [EMG] [ALL] motion_startup: Exit motion, cannot create log file /var/log/motion/motion.log: Permission denied

prabu@pizero1 ~> systemctl status motion
○ motion.service - Motion detection video capture daemon
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/motion.service; enabled; preset: enabled)
     Active: inactive (dead) since Fri 2024-08-23 14:50:55 IST; 1min 32s ago
   Duration: 3.951s
       Docs: man:motion(1)
    Process: 6672 ExecStart=/usr/bin/motion (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
   Main PID: 6672 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
        CPU: 1.063s

Aug 23 14:50:51 pizero1 systemd[1]: Started motion.service - Motion detection video capture daemon.
Aug 23 14:50:55 pizero1 motion[6672]: [0:motion] [NTC] [ALL] conf_load: Processing thread 0 - config file /etc/motion/moti>
Aug 23 14:50:55 pizero1 motion[6672]: [0:motion] [NTC] [ALL] conf_load: Processing thread 0 - config file /etc/motion/moti>
Aug 23 14:50:55 pizero1 motion[6672]: [0:motion] [ERR] [ALL] mycreate_path: Problem creating directory /var/log/motion: Pe>
Aug 23 14:50:55 pizero1 motion[6672]: [0:motion] [EMG] [ALL] motion_startup: Exit motion, cannot create log file /var/log/>
Aug 23 14:50:55 pizero1 motion[6672]: [0:motion] [ERR] [ALL] mycreate_path: Problem creating directory /var/log/motion: Pe>
Aug 23 14:50:55 pizero1 motion[6672]: [0:motion] [EMG] [ALL] motion_startup: Exit motion, cannot create log file /var/log/>
Aug 23 14:50:55 pizero1 systemd[1]: motion.service: Deactivated successfully.
Aug 23 14:50:55 pizero1 systemd[1]: motion.service: Consumed 1.063s CPU time.
prabu@pizero1 ~ [3]> sudo mkdir /var/log/motion
prabu@pizero1 ~> sudo chown motion:motion /var/log/motion/
prabu@pizero1 ~> systemctl status motion
● motion.service - Motion detection video capture daemon
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/motion.service; enabled; preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Fri 2024-08-23 14:53:43 IST; 2s ago
       Docs: man:motion(1)
   Main PID: 6880 (motion)
      Tasks: 1 (limit: 174)
        CPU: 818ms
     CGroup: /system.slice/motion.service
             └─6880 /usr/bin/motion

Aug 23 14:53:43 pizero1 systemd[1]: Started motion.service - Motion detection video capture daemon.
drwxr-s---  2 motion    adm  4096 Aug 23 14:50 motion/
prabu@pizero1 ~> sudo groups motion
motion : motion video
prabu@pizero1 ~> cat /etc/group |grep adm
adm:x:4:prabu
prabu@pizero1 ~> sudo chown motion:motion /var/lib/motion

Restored the earlier working configuration of motion and camera files. Took backup. Still camera did not work

prabu@pizero1 ~ [1]> sudo cp /etc/motion/motion.conf /etc/motion/motion.conf.default
prabu@pizero1 ~> sudo cp backup/etc/motion/motion.conf /etc/motion/
prabu@pizero1 ~> sudo cp backup/etc/motion/camera1.conf /etc/motion/

From https://motion-project.github.io/4.5.1/motion_config.html#basic_setup_picam ↗

In the Raspbian version based upon Debian release of ‘bullseye’ (and presumably later releases), Raspbian allows access to the PI camera via an application called libcamera. libcamera provides access to the camera as a v4l2 device but this interface is only available when using a special application. Users must run Motion using the command “libcamerify motion” and then specify /dev/video0 in the Motion configuration file.

Error: Cant find libcamerify. libcamera-tools needs to be installed to solve the above error. https://github.com/Motion-Project/motion/discussions/1620 ↗

prabu@pizero1 ~> sudo apt install libcamera-tools

Also executed the below command from motion website documentation:

After updating the file /lib/systemd/system/motion.service, and restarting the service, noticed that systemctl status displayed the below error message:

ERROR: ld.so: object ‘/usr/lib/aarch64-linux-gnu/libcamera/v4l2-compat.so’ from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded (cannot open shared object file): ignored.

As per https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=358211 ↗ installed another package.

prabu@pizero1 ~> sudo apt install libcamera-v4l2

After the above packages are installed, picam started working.

git in Pi Zero

Installed git and configured bare repository to track the configuration changes.

Issued all the below commands after installing git:

git init --bare $HOME/.systemfiles
alias sysconfig='git --git-dir=$HOME/.systemfiles --work-tree=/'
echo "alias sysconfig='git --git-dir=/home/prabu/.systemfiles --work-tree=/'" >> ~/.config/fish/config.fish
source ~/.config/fish/config.fish
git config  --global user.email kprabuanand@gmail.com
git config --global user.name "Prabu Anand Kalivaradhan"
sysconfig commit -m "config file from previous setup"
sysconfig config status.showUntrackedFiles no
cat .systemfiles/config
[core]
    repositoryformatversion = 0
    filemode = true
    bare = true
[status]
    showUntrackedFiles = no
prabu@pizero1 ~> sysconfig config status.showUntrackedFiles no

sysconfig remote add origin https://github.com/prabusw/pizero2W.git ↗ was a mistake sysconfig remote set-url origin git+ssh://git@github.com/prabusw/pizero2W.git https://gist.github.com/ddeveloperr/1859fd395e7cb5832c59 ↗

nginx

samba

samba has been configured on the pi zero2W on a diskless Alpine Linux .