Practice: Linux/Software Setup Challenges

Relax. We'll talk through this in plain words — no textbook voice.

What you'll walk away with

Get comfortable with Practice: Linux/Software Setup Challenges, no intimidation required
Be able to wire the hardware and run the code yourself
Apply this concept right away in a real project

Let's think about this for a second

This practice set steps up the difficulty — these tasks require combining SSH remote setup, systemd services, and web dashboard concepts all at once.

Let's connect this to a real-world scenario

2 tasks: (1) Auto-Start Web Dashboard — rewrite the Flask app from the 'Setting Up a Web Server on Pi' lesson as a boot-on-start service using the systemd pattern from the 'Running Services on Boot' lesson (write the service file, enable it, and confirm the dashboard auto-runs after a Pi restart); (2) Remote Backup Script — write a shell script that regularly (daily) backs up the temp_log.csv file to your computer with rsync, then revisit the Linux tutorial's cron lesson to set up a daily schedule for it.

Task 1: Rewrite the Flask dashboard as a systemd service
Task 2: Schedule the rsync backup script daily with cron
Verify both tasks keep working after a Pi restart

Let's walk through it together

bash

# Task 2 hint — cron entry for daily backup at 2am
# crontab -e ထဲမှာ ထည့်ရမယ့် line:
0 2 * * * rsync -avz /home/pi/temp_log.csv user@backup-computer:/backups/

You should see

You'll finish with a system that keeps running automatically for both tasks even after the Pi restarts.

5-Minute Try-It

Work through both tasks yourself — use the two Linux tutorial lessons on systemd/cron as your reference along the way.

A quick word of caution

Test-run the cron job yourself in the terminal before adding it to crontab — as the Linux tutorial's cron warning points out, the cron environment can have different variables than your terminal environment.

Easy traps

In Task 1, only enabling the systemd service but forgetting to start it (remember the difference between enable and start from the Linux tutorial)
In Task 2, adding the cron job to crontab right away without manually testing the rsync command from the terminal first

Now try it yourself

Work through both tasks yourself — use the two Linux tutorial lessons on systemd/cron as your reference along the way.

You'll know it worked when: You'll finish with a system that keeps running automatically for both tasks even after the Pi restarts.