- Fedora Server is also available for Single Board Computers (SBC) like the legendary Raspberry Pi. That device started some years ago primarily as an experimentation and education tool. 

- Fedora Server Edition on such a DIY device?

- The technology evolved over the years into an affordable but sufficiently powerful tool for many task of everyday life. It ignited a new business field for many hardware makers, all of which, while keeping the basic concept, take the Raspberry Pi as a reference to surpass. This resulted in a rich variety of variants that is difficult to keep track of. They follow the same basic principle, but _differ in many, sometimes significant details_ regarding software support, installation and maintenance. 

- While the installation procedure is completely different from the standard Anaconda installation, in the end Fedora Server works on application level exactly as otherwise familiar. 

- When choosing a device for Fedora Server, check carefully if it is actually supported. Some of the newer models claim to support Linux as operating system. In fact, to even boot, they require proprietary, closed software that Fedora cannot and will not distribute. They only run with a special Linux version customized by the manufacturer. Take everything with a grain of salt. Unlike the x86 universe, don't expect everything to work just as smoothly in ARM rsp. aarch64. It is best to ask in advance on the arm mailing list.

- == Why using Single Board Computer Server?

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- Certainly, most prominent and well-known features are favorable price, low power consumption, and small footprint. 

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- But it's not just pure affordability in several respects. The devices now offer a performance that is suitable for many typical tasks in the Soho area. Examples include mail, web, file servers, e-book or document library, media servers and more. And not only in the domestic sector, but also for smaller office environments. They can thus replace the popular NAS devices while offering significantly more performance and greater adaptability and flexibility - reduced costs rather as a side effect.

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- However, those properties also open up additional opportunities. 

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- Fedora Server works identically on the architectures at the application level. Standard software such as Postgresql database server or file server are available. Other software such as Java or Python applications run on both architectures. This opens up the possibility of building up redundancy with little effort. In the event of a malfunction of the (main) server, there is no threat of a complete shutdown, but operation with restrictions is possible. 

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- Critical services such as monitor software can be offloaded to a dedicated device and immunized against server-level failures.

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- A closer look opens up a multitude of possibilities.

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- == How it works

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- Single board computers originally had only one data storage medium, an SD card. And they were designed to boot directly from that SD card. There was no opportunity to boot from one medium and install to another. That original principle is still basically maintained today. The device expects a ready-to-use operating system, configured precisely for the respective hardware. The default boot medium is still an SD card, although many devices now offer eMMC, sometimes USB or even a SATA or NMVe hard disk as an alternative.

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- Fedora distributes a generic Fedora Server Edition image, preconfigured for Raspberry Pi. Additionally, it provides a utility to transfer the image to the prospective boot medium, usually an SD card. Furthermore, the transfer program can reconfigure the image for an alternative SBC. Optionally, it can also make some adjustments to the initial configuration.

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- Fedora Server Edition creates by default a small /boot partition, used by grub2 bootloader and data needed during the initial boot phase, and in case of an uefi system an efi partition. It fills the remaining area with another partition and one volume group (VG) created therein. In that Volume Group, a logical volume of approx. 15 GB (the exact value depends on the disk capacity) is created for the operating system and its software. The other available space remains free for the creation of logical volumes (LVs) for user data, which are to be mounted at the appropriate positions in the directory tree of the system area.

- In the world of SBCs, all available space is usually allocated to a single (root) file system. Initially, the available storage media were also comparatively small. Any further segmentation would be impractical. Accordingly, the Fedora file system image does not provide for any segmentation. The transfer program that installs this image on a disk provides an option to fit the image to the available space, also without a differentiation option. 

- Just in case you already decided to fill the complete space on disk with the root file system, you may add the --resizefs parameter which would result in an _alternative command line_:

- Directly at a terminal of the Raspberry Pi we will make only the minimal, absolutely necessary configuration. This is the setting of a root password and the determination of the IP address. Everything else is done comfortably on our desktop. 

- Always complete this step and close with 'c'. Otherwise this installation routine can again and again conflict with the subsequent configuration.