I like to use Raspberry Pis for a lot of my projects. They are cheap, easy to configure and they can be powered by the 2A USB socket found on the back of most modern TV’s.
Running Ubuntu Mate 16.04.2 with the GUI disabled they make a great little server.
Something I like to do is disable Bluetooth and WiFi as these are not generally things that I run on a server.
There are probably a variety of ways to achieve this but this is how I do it.
Log into your Raspberry Pi via SSH and using your favourite text editor open the file /boot/config.txt
Add the following two lines:
dtoverlay=pi3-disable-bt
dtoverlay=pi3-disable-wifi
Save and exit and then run the following command:
sudo systemctl disable hciuart
Fire up the text editor again and open the file /etc/modprobe.d/raspi-blacklist.conf
Add the following lines:
#disable wifi
blacklist brcmfmac
blacklist brcmutil
#disable bluetooth
blacklist btbcm
blacklist hci_uart
Save and reboot
Hi, do you disable video output too?
I haven’t disabled video output on any projects to date. If there is a problem with network connectivity to the device it is helpful to be able to go to site and plug in a monitor and keyboard to access the console. I do disable the GUI however, this can be done using raspi-config. Details of this process are available here http://www.hospitableit.com/howto/installing-ubuntu-mate-16-04-2-lts-on-a-raspberry-pi-3/