How to Set Up and Optimize a Raspberry Pi Zero W as a Minimal Web Server

Raspberry Pi (RPi) is a credit‑card‑sized Linux‑based single‑board computer; the Zero W model is a miniature version with a 1 GHz BCM2835 CPU, 512 MB RAM, Wi‑Fi/Bluetooth, micro‑USB, mini‑HDMI, GPIO pins and a micro‑SD slot.

1. Prepare the SD card – download the official Raspbian Stretch Lite image, unzip it to obtain a .img file, and write the image to a 16 GB or 32 GB SanDisk micro‑SD card using Win32DiskImager.

2. Enable SSH and Wi‑Fi – after flashing, the boot partition is visible on Windows. Create an empty file named ssh (no extension) to enable SSH on first boot. Then create wpa_supplicant.conf with the following content (replace with your SSID and password):

<code>country=CN
ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1

network={
    ssid="your_wifi_name"
    psk="your_wifi_password"
}
</code>

3. First‑boot configuration – insert the card into the Zero W, power it via a micro‑USB cable, and locate its IP address on your router (e.g., 192.168.0.104). Connect with SSH (default user pi , password raspberry ).

4. System optimisation – replace the default Debian mirrors with a faster domestic source (e.g., USTC) by editing /etc/apt/sources.list and /etc/apt/sources.list.d/raspi.list :

<code>sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list
# comment existing lines and add:
deb http://mirrors.ustc.edu.cn/raspbian/raspbian/raspbian stretch main contrib non-free rpi

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list.d/raspi.list
# comment existing lines and add:
deb http://mirrors.ustc.edu.cn/archive.raspberrypi.org/debian stretch main ui

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
</code>

Set the timezone to Shanghai with sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata , and ensure SSH starts on boot (either via raspi-config → Interfacing Options → SSH, or by adding /etc/init.d/ssh start before exit 0 in /etc/rc.local ).

5. Install a web server – install nginx:

<code># install
sudo apt-get install nginx
# start
sudo /etc/init.d/nginx start
# restart
sudo /etc/init.d/nginx restart
# stop
sudo /etc/init.d/nginx stop
</code>

Access the server locally via the Pi’s IP address to verify the default nginx page.

6. Expose the service externally – use a tunnelling tool such as ngrok (or frp). After registering, download the ARM version of ngrok, configure it with your auth token, and run it in a screen session to keep it alive:

<code>ngrok http 80
</code>

Visit the provided public URL (e.g., http://zerow.ittun.com/ ) to see the site from anywhere. Note that automatic startup of ngrok is not covered and must be added manually.

The Zero W runs comfortably with ~250 MB free RAM and CPU temperatures around 37‑39 °C even after two days of continuous nginx and ngrok operation.