DietPi Tools¶

• Begin by selecting Software Optimized in the main menu list and hit Enter.

• Scroll through the list of available software - for more details check DietPi Optimised Software.

The list of optimised software is long. You either browse the list or use the option Search.

• To install software on your DietPi, select it in the list and press Space to add it to the installation list. If you change your mind, hit Space again to remove it.

• Once you’ve selected the software you wish to install, press Tab to switch to the confirmation options at the bottom. Select OK, then hit Enter to confirm.

• To begin installing your software, select Install from the main menu list, then hit Enter. DietPi will ask you to confirm your choice(s). Select OK, then hit Enter to begin the installation.

The software you selected will begin to install at this point. Once the process is completed, you may be asked to restart your device. Press OK to confirm.

This section provides:

• software packages that are often used and installed via apt install <package>, without additional optimisation from DietPi team.
• or packages not directly required, but pulled as a dependency, like: build tools, libraries or runtime systems. E.g. packages like Python3, pip, tcpdump or midnight commander can be installed using the dialog.

DietPi supports a large number of software titles. Instead of scrolling through the Software Optimised list to find a specific software title, you may use the Search option. Type in the software ID or any keyword form its title or description and you’ll get a list filtered by matching results.

This lets you select your preferred SSH server. Also you can uninstall any SSH server to save memory and to exclude any external ssh based access.

DietPi-Software allows you to easily choose a method of accessing the files on your DietPi system. Installing one of DietPi’s file server choices will allow you to access and share files on your DietPi system.

DietPi will then automatically install and setup the file server for you. DietPi will also clean and remove any previous file server from your system.

The default destination directory for file servers is /mnt/dietpi_userdata.

The reasons for choosing ProFTPD over Samba may be:

• ProFTPD outperforms Samba in all aspects of performance.
• ProFTPD can max out the RPi 100 Mbit connection with minimal CPU usage.
• Samba server on a RPi v1 will hit 100% CPU usage at 40 Mbit transfer rate.

See file servers overview for further information.

Various logging methods can be selected from lightweight to full. If you don’t require log files, get a performance boost. If you need full system logging features, DietPi can do that too.

The Log System can be changed at any time by selecting a different “Log System” from the menu.

See also https://dietpi.com/docs/software/log_system/.

The DietPi Webserver Preference system allows you to choose your favourite webserver for use in DietPi installations. If not decided, read more on Which WEBSERVER to CHOOSE ?

In DietPi, we class user data as:

• Data storage for applications. Some examples are ownCloud/Nextcloud data store, BitTorrent downloads and SQL data store.
• The location where your File Server choice will point to, if you install one, like Samba Server or ProFTPD.
• The location where you can upload and store your media content, for other applications to use, like Kodi, Emby or Plex.

For all software you install in dietpi-software, you can access your user data with /mnt/dietpi_userdata. Regardless of where the data is physically stored, a symlink will automatically be created for you if needed.
To check where the physical location is, you can run the following command:

readlink -f /mnt/dietpi_userdata

You can move your user data to another location (e.g. USB drive). Simply run dietpi-software and enter the User data location menu option:

• If you need to setup a new external drive, select Drive Manager to launch DietPi-Drive Manager.
• Use the List option to select from a list of mounted drives, or, select Manual for a custom location.

DietPi will automatically move your existing user data to your new location.

Install software item(s) which have been selected via Optimised Software or Additional Software lists, or via SSH Server, File Server or Log System choices.

Select one or more software items which you would like to be removed from your DietPi system.

Beside the interactive software installation via dietpi-software with checking wanted software packages and installing them, there is the option of installing the software packages via the shell command line.
The usage of dietpi-software is:

Usage: dietpi-software [<command> [<software_id>...]]
Available commands:
  <empty>     Interactive menu to install or uninstall software
  install     <software_id>...  Install each software given by space-separated list of IDs
  reinstall   <software_id>...  Reinstall each software given by space-separated list of IDs
  uninstall   <software_id>...  Uninstall each software given by space-separated list of IDs
  list        Print a list with IDs and info for all available software titles
  free        Print an unused software ID, free for a new software implementation

The <software_id> which has to be given is the one which is present in the software list within the dietpi-software dialogues:

E.g. to install Chromium, LXQt and GIMP you have to execute:

dietpi-software install 113 173 174

The display options are used to

• Set your screen resolution, or go headless to save additional resources.
• Control your GPU memory splits.
• Enable/disable the RPi camera.

The audio options are used to

• Change sound cards with ease (e.g.: HiFiBerry / Odroid HiFi shield).

The performance options are used to

• Overclock your system with a vast selection of overclocking profiles for your device.
• Change the CPU governor and tweak your ARM temperature limits.

The advanced options are used to

• Configure swap file size
• Configure time synchronization and real time clock source
• Update device firmware
• Toggle serial console
• Toggle Bluetooth

The security options are used to

• Change password and hostname

The language/regional options are used to

• Set timezone, locale and keyboard options. Everything you will need to make it feel like home

The network options are used to

• Scan and connect to your WiFi router with ease
• Change to a static IP address on your network
• Configure your proxy settings
• Test internet connection
• Toggle IPv6 support

The miscellaneous network options options are used to

• Select an APT mirror to connect to the Debian (or Raspbian) APT repository.
• Select an NTP mirror to synchronise your system time.
• Choose timeouts for network and URL connection tests.
• Network Drives redirects you to the DietPi-Drive_Manager which allows you to mount Samba and NFS shares on your DietPi system.
• No-IP is a dynamic DNS provider which allows you to access your home network/server with a static domain name. The client is required to inform No-IP of your current dynamic external IP on a regular basis.

The autostart options are used to

• Quickly and easily change what software runs after boot. Kodi, Desktop, console and many more

The tools options are used to

• Perform CPU, RAM, file system and network benchmarks, optionally upload your results and review statistics at: https://dietpi.com/survey/#benchmark
• Perform CPU/IO/RAM/DISK stress tests to test the stability of your system, e.g. after applying some overclocking.

To use an additional drive (example USB drive) the following steps have to be done:

1. Run dietpi-drive_manager to bring up the main menu.
2. Plug in the drive you wish to use.
3. Select Refresh from the menu (if it doesn’t show up straight away, give it a few seconds for system to update, then try again).

4. Select the drive you wish to use from the list, then press Enter.

   

   If needed, format the drive before usage selecting the Format option (file system type description see below).
   Remark: Formatting drives can only be done unmounted.

   If needed, mount the drive via the Mount selection. If mounted, commands Unmount, Benchmark, User data, Swapfile and Read only are present.

   

You can move the location of the DietPi user data (default /mnt/dietpi_userdata) or the swap file to a different location on a target drive. This may be useful if your file system containing the DietPi user data resp. swap file has only little space left. Therefore execute the following steps (example user data, swap file is quite similar):

1. Run dietpi-drive_manager to bring up the main menu.
2. Have the target drive connected and mounted (see description above).
3. Select the target drive and press Enter.

4. In the drives menu select User data resp. Swapfile and follow the instructions.

   • Move user data:

   

   • Change swap file size:

   

Formatting file systems lead you to these dialogues:

In the latter dialog you have to choose the file system type. The following selections may be chosen:

• EXT4 (Default)
  Recommended for users who plan to use this drive solely on the DietPi system (e.g. dedicated drive).
  + The standard for Linux file systems
  - Not compatible on a Windows system

• NTFS
  Recommended for users who plan to use this drive on a Windows system.
  + Compatible on a Windows system
  - High CPU usage during transfers (spawns a process)

• FAT32
  Recommended for users who want high compatibility across multiples operating systems.
  + Highly compatible with all OS
  - 4GB file size limit
  - 2TB drive size limit
  - Does not support file/folder permissions
  - Does not support symbolic links

• HFS+
  Recommended for Mac owners.
  + Mac OS file system

• BTRFS
  A modern Linux file system.
  + https://github.com/Fourdee/DietPi/issues/271#issuecomment-247173250

• F2FS
  Linux file system designed for flash/NAND based drives.
  + Flash-Friendly File System: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F2FS

• exFAT
  Windows file system, intended for external drives, e.g. USB flash drives or SD cards
  + Flash-Friendly File System: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExFAT

If you want to extend your DietPi SD card space by moving the system to a larger memory card, this can be achieved by the following steps:

1. Shutdown your system and put the SD card into a card reader of a different systems.
2. Copy the SD card contents to the new (larger) SD card. This can e.g. be done using
   • the dd command (command line option)
   • balenaEtcher or Rufus (graphical user interface option)
   • gnome-disks (graphical user interface option)
3. Boot the system with the copied memory card.
4. Run dietpi-drive_manager to bring up the main menu.
5. Select the disk containing the root (/) partition and press Enter.

6. Select Resize and press Enter.

   

7. Reboot your system to expand the root file system to use the whole space of the new memory card.

A similar procedure may be used when moving the SD card contents to a smaller SD card. During this procedure you typically need to shrink the partition size (e.g. with parted or gparted) before copying the partition image to a different memory card. Also, do the resize to use the full space on the new card.

The DietPi Survey data file is sent when you install software with dietpi-software and update DietPi with dietpi-update.

The uploaded data is tiny (about 1 KB) and will not affect your internet bandwidth or system performance.

Within the command line program dietpi-survey the exact copy of the transmitted data can be viewed. The transmitted file is written in bash code to allow us faster report page creation (e.g. done for https://dietpi.com/survey).

Following is an example how this file may look like:

#!/bin/bash
((aDIETPI_VERSION[6.34]++))
((aGIT_BRANCH[MichaIng/master]++))
((aDEVICE_NAME[Virtual Machine (x86_64)]++))
((aCPU_ARCH[x86_64]++))
((aCPU_COUNT[2]++))
((aDISTRO_VERSION[buster]++))
((aAUTOSTART_OPTION[${aAUTOSTART_NAME[0]:=0}]++))
((aAUTO_SETUP_AUTOMATED[0]++))
((aNETWORK_INTERFACE[eth0]++))
# -------------------------
# DietPi-Software installs
# -------------------------
((aSOFTWARE[${aSOFTWARE_NAME6_34[103]:=103}]++))
((aSOFTWARE[${aSOFTWARE_NAME6_34[104]:=104}]++))

The tail of the file lists installed software packages by their IDs. The example above shows a very basic system, so only two software packages (#103: DietPi-RAMlog, #104: Dropbear) are installed. To find out the names of the installed software package IDs installed via dietpi-software you can execute

dietpi-software list | grep ' =2'

This gives the IDs, names and info of software. The above example would show

# dietpi-software list | grep ' =2'
id 103 | =2 | dietpi-ramlog: minimal, optimised logging | | https://dietpi.com/docs/software/log_system/#dietpi-ramlog
id 104 | =2 | dropbear: lightweight ssh server | | https://dietpi.com/docs/software/ssh/#dropbear

You can select Opt-in or Opt-out of DietPi Survey by running the following command and follow the instructions:

dietpi-survey

This may also be achieved by setting SURVEY_OPTED_IN=0 (Opt-out) or SURVEY_OPTED_IN=1 (Opt-in) in /boot/dietpi.txt before the first system boot.

To check the actual status, dietpi-survey may be called. The current mode will be pre-selected and highlighted.
Alternatively you can use

grep 'SURVEY_OPTED_IN' /boot/dietpi.txt

which displays the status like

# grep 'SURVEY_OPTED_IN' /boot/dietpi.txt
SURVEY_OPTED_IN=1