Personal ARM Server running Gentoo - Hardware Suggestions:

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nelsonwcf · Post by **nelsonwcf** » Mon Apr 11, 2016 2:20 pm

Hi everybody,

I was researching for some low cost server that could run Gentoo at home and had the epiphany of having an ARM server instead of Intel one. Cheaper, fanless and small. However, there are many options in the market now (Raspberry/Banana/Orange PI, Cubieboard, etc.) and for many of them available information is less than ideal, so I decided to come here to ask for advice. I intend to use the hardware as a DLNA Media server, file server and possibly a mail server for my domain. Maybe an OpenSSL for tunneling as well. Gentoo/Portage compatible is a prerequisite, obviously.

What board do you recommend me to get?

Thank you,
Nelson

szatox · Post by **szatox** » Mon Apr 11, 2016 8:53 pm

Gentoo/Portage compatible is a prerequisite, obviously.

Gentoo is DIY distro. It will run on whatever _YOU_ can make it to run on. One could pick up the challenge from NetBSD guys, who made their toy run on a toaster.

intend to use the hardware as a DLNA Media server, file server and possibly a mail server for my domain. Maybe an OpenSSL

Well... Looks like actually any of those new arm boards are strong enough for your needs. One valid approach is to play safe and buy something that provides pre-built images (e.g. R-PI), so you can fall back and still get some value out of it in case you failed.
Another way is just getting the first thing you can put your hands on. They are all cheap and differ mostly with the included IO devices.. Either way, if you want gentoo, you will have to make friends with cross compilation and get your hands dirty. Perhaps more dirty than you actually want to: it's gonna be a very long way.

chithanh · Post by **chithanh** » Mon Apr 11, 2016 9:47 pm

You can look here for boards that are confirmed to work
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Category:Embedded_systems
But it should be possible to run Gentoo on any board if there is another working Linux distro. But you may have to figure out some things yourself when there is no wiki article yet.

I suggest that you get a board with (native) SATA port and Gigabit Ethernet for your media server, like Orange Pi (not plus/PC/2/...), A20-OLinuXino, Cubox i4Pro, or Banana Pi.

As media server this is probably less important, but among those listed here, only the Cubox has free graphics drivers (etnaviv).

Cyker · Post by **Cyker** » Mon Apr 11, 2016 10:04 pm

Thing worth knowing: Almost everything runs over the USB bus on the RPi and will bottleneck horribly under high I/O load.

nelsonwcf · Post by **nelsonwcf** » Mon Apr 11, 2016 11:22 pm

Fantastic, guys. Thank you so much.

Irre · Post by **Irre** » Tue Apr 12, 2016 10:22 am

Odroid C2 is really the most promising ARM machine.

I will buy one as soon as possibly and eventually replace my slow gen 1 Raspberry PI:s

Roman_Gruber · Post by **Roman_Gruber** » Tue Apr 12, 2016 11:59 am

you better look into those mainboards with onboard cpus, like amd apus, or intel atom

e.g.: ASRock C70M1 (90-MXGTM0-A0UAYZ)

http://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/C70M1/

35 euros in my area

Chipset: AMD A50M • CPU: AMD C-70, 2x 1.00GHz, 2x 512kB cache, 9W TDP • Memory: 2x DDR3 DIMM, PC3-10667U/DDR3-1333, max. 16GB (UDIMM) • Extension slots: 1x PCIe 2.0 x16 (x4) • External connectors: 1x VGA, 4x USB 2.0, 1x Gb LAN (Realtek RTL8111E), 5x jack, 1x S/PDIF (optical), 1x PS/2 Combo • Internal connectors: 4x USB 2.0, 4x SATA 6Gb/s, 1x CPU fan 3-Pin (occupied), 1x fan 4-Pin, 1x fan 3-Pin, 1x serial, CIR-Header • Audio: 7.1 (Realtek ALC887) • RAID level: not available • Multi-GPU: not available • power connections: 1x 24-Pin ATX • Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 6290 (IGP) • Special features: mini-ITX • Warranty: two years (processing through a dealer only)

Its about price and calculation possibilities

35 euros is not bad + you need ram + an old hdd (or other way to boot your os) + cheap or used atx power supply

9 watts for the cpu is not that bad.

there are many used atx power supplies on the second hand market, they are very cheap.

arm is not that power efficient and very limited for the things you can do.

chithanh · Post by **chithanh** » Tue Apr 12, 2016 12:10 pm

I would avoid Amlogic based boards like the ODROID C1 and C2 at the moment. You will be stuck with old kernels. ODROID C1 is still at kernel 3.10.
There is an effort to mainline Amlogic code, linux-meson, which is kind of a poor man's sunxi. Until something usable comes out of that, better go with other SoCs.

Irre · Post by **Irre** » Tue Apr 12, 2016 12:34 pm

Things happen fast now. Image with kernel 3.14.y is already there. http://www.armbian.com/odroid-c2/

C5ace · Post by **C5ace** » Tue Apr 12, 2016 12:57 pm

tw04l124 wrote:you better look into those mainboards with onboard cpus, like amd apus, or intel atom

e.g.: ASRock C70M1 (90-MXGTM0-A0UAYZ)

http://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/C70M1/

35 euros in my area

Chipset: AMD A50M • CPU: AMD C-70, 2x 1.00GHz, 2x 512kB cache, 9W TDP • Memory: 2x DDR3 DIMM, PC3-10667U/DDR3-1333, max. 16GB (UDIMM) • Extension slots: 1x PCIe 2.0 x16 (x4) • External connectors: 1x VGA, 4x USB 2.0, 1x Gb LAN (Realtek RTL8111E), 5x jack, 1x S/PDIF (optical), 1x PS/2 Combo • Internal connectors: 4x USB 2.0, 4x SATA 6Gb/s, 1x CPU fan 3-Pin (occupied), 1x fan 4-Pin, 1x fan 3-Pin, 1x serial, CIR-Header • Audio: 7.1 (Realtek ALC887) • RAID level: not available • Multi-GPU: not available • power connections: 1x 24-Pin ATX • Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 6290 (IGP) • Special features: mini-ITX • Warranty: two years (processing through a dealer only)
Its about price and calculation possibilities

35 euros is not bad + you need ram + an old hdd (or other way to boot your os) + cheap or used atx power supply

9 watts for the cpu is not that bad.

there are many used atx power supplies on the second hand market, they are very cheap.

arm is not that power efficient and very limited for the things you can do.

Use a HP T3M28PT-OPENBOX. Costs Downunder $313.00 Australian or about $235.00 US-Dollars.

Has 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD, Powersupply, Battery backup, LCD screen, and more.
Makes a very fine web, mail, dns, ftp and media server with build in UPS. Try http://www.japan.interworld.net.au hosted on this laptop.

chithanh · Post by **chithanh** » Tue Apr 12, 2016 1:41 pm

Irre wrote:Things happen fast now. Image with kernel 3.14.y is already there. http://www.armbian.com/odroid-c2/

ODROID C2 got released with kernel 3.14 because that is the current Android kernel. ODROID C1 came out with kernel 3.10 (due to Android) and never got a newer kernel release.

nelsonwcf · Post by **nelsonwcf** » Tue Apr 12, 2016 7:37 pm

I opted for the BPi. I'm new in ARM architecture so I wanted something cheap to try out. I've got everything: board, case, charger, cables and mSATA case for US$58. Going to arrive on Thursday. I can't wait.

I'm worried that it's somewhat similar to RPi, I'm guessing it also has the Bus I/O problem as the SATA I/O are also processed by the USB bus but I noticed that only after the purchase. Hope it won't have problems streaming video through GbE.

Yes, I've checked the ODROID C2 and my hand was itching to click on the buy button, but it supports only USB 2.0 and no SATA, even though the processor was pretty good and was the only one to support HDMI 2.0. ODROID XU4 had the SATA but the processor was back to 32 bit and too expensive, not mentioning the need for the active cooling. The only reason I didn't go for Intel/AMD architecture was because I wanted to try something different. I'm not sure what the capabilities of the hardware will be and that's what it was fun about. I didn't check the T3M28PT at the time, but it would have been to expensive for me right now (can buy a reasonably good media server for US$ 80.00 so no point in getting that much expensive).

Also I've noticed from this link (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compariso ... kernel-116) that basically all arm boards require some kind of kernel patching / customization to work so no difference between the boards in this regard.

Again, thank you.