Raspberry Pi notes
obsidian-remote-ssh runs comfortably on Raspberry Pi 4 / 5 / Zero 2 W. The daemon is a single Go binary — no runtime deps beyond the Linux kernel + glibc.
Recommended setup
- Raspberry Pi OS (Bookworm) or Ubuntu Server 22.04+ for arm64.
- SSH enabled (
raspi-config→ Interface Options → SSH). - Your public key in
~/.ssh/authorized_keyson the Pi. - A vault directory:
mkdir ~/notes.
First-time install
Just connect via the plugin — the auto-deploy uploads the right binary (obsidian-remote-server-linux-arm64) and starts it.
Performance notes
| Pi model | Vault size handled comfortably | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Pi 5 | 100k+ files, multi-GB | Effortless. Use this for a “primary” home vault. |
| Pi 4 (4–8 GB) | ~30k files, 1–2 GB | Excellent — the sweet spot for most users. |
| Pi 3B+ | ~10k files | OK for moderate vaults; SD card I/O is the bottleneck. |
| Pi Zero 2 W | ~5k files | Works; expect 100–200 ms RPC latency. |
The daemon idles at ~5 MB RSS. Watcher subscriptions add ~50–100 KB each. Concurrent reads/writes spike CPU briefly but the steady state is near-zero.
SD card vs SSD
Vault on SD card: fine, but fs.walk on a large vault can take 5–10s on the first cold-cache call. Vault on a USB-attached SSD: ~10× faster cold reads, much better for vaults > 5k files.
Long-lived daemon
The plugin’s auto-deploy reuses an already-running daemon when one is healthy (reuse probe) and only redeploys when reuse fails. For a Pi you’ll keep on 24/7, run the daemon under systemd so it survives Pi reboots — the plugin will pick it up on connect via the reuse path.
Cooling / throttling
Sustained fs.walk on a large vault, with no heatsink on a Pi 4, will throttle. Add a basic heatsink — the daemon stays out of throttle thereafter.
Headless mode
Many Pi setups have no monitor attached. SSH all the way:
sudo loginctl enable-linger $USER # services survive logout
systemctl --user enable --now obsidian-remote-server # see [[en/server/systemd|systemd]]Next: Binary signing.