Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Building an ARM64 home server the hard way

jforberg.se

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 119 posts

Re: Building an ARM64 home server the hard way

#31

Post by daneel_w »

Timon3 wrote: post #30
daneel_w wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just a bootloader, with a few tricks up its sleeve. All it does is letting you boot from any storage medium you want (most notably NVMe) instead of being restricted to the hardcoded sequence of the boot ROM.

I understand that part. What I'm talking about specifically is part of a bootloader, see for example this page in the documentation of SWUpdate: https://sbabic.github.io/swupdate/bootloader_interface.html By adding communication between the OS and the bootloader it's possible to implement redundant updates for whole partitions (specifically A/B-updates with a boot counter). U-Boot supports this (depending on the stat…

I don't know if it retained swupdate functionality, or if it's drop-in compatible with u-boot's such.

Re: Building an ARM64 home server the hard way

#32

Post by geerlingguy »

kryptocannon wrote: post #6
rcarmo wrote: post #3

I set up Proxmox on one of my Pi 4s (using an external SSD) and am quite happy with it. Runs four different LXC containers (one of which is a public-facing ActivityPub server for testing) and gives me zero headaches, so am currently looking for a beefier alternative that has a proper M.2 slot and at least 16GB of RAM... I do wish that alternative boards had better OS support (especially the Rockchip ones, which tend…

Is there an official Proxmox build for the Raspberry Pi or are you using a third party?

Most likely Pimox

Re: Building an ARM64 home server the hard way

#33

Post by jforberg »

znpy wrote: post #22

> The total cost comes to around €350 A few weeks ago I bought an used intel nuc7 with a 7th gen core i5… for 150€. It came with a 120gb ssd, 4gb ram and a power brick. I still don’t see the value in this SBCs used as home servers.

NUC is a single board computer :)

If you think the price is high, I would point out that the SSD I used cost €200 new when I purchased it back in mid 2022. A used 120 GB SSD by contrast can be had for maybe €10 which alone would explain the difference in cost.

Now if 120 GB is enough for your application, that's a good value so more power to you.

Re: Building an ARM64 home server the hard way

#34

Post by rbanffy »

andai wrote: post #13

Somewhat tangential but is Arch really suitable for servers? Most Arch users I know still prefer Debian for servers. Yet I know at least one company that uses them for servers, which surprised me. I know the Arch breaking meme is overblown but for a server I'd still want something with less moving parts.

> Somewhat tangential but is Arch really suitable for servers?

I think we all use the software we choose to use in order to use the software we choose to use. When we build a cluster, it's often done in order to build a cluster.

Re: Building an ARM64 home server the hard way

#36

Post by rbanffy »

jraph wrote: post #15

I've been hosting some websites on a RockPro64 board running armbian for 2 years. I'm quite happy with it. I recommend using an SSD and not an SD card though.

I had issues with SD card that may be related to durability. A lot of it was mitigated by moving the /var/log folder to a tmpfs (if you don't care much for the logs, or are using something to ship them to another machine, you really don't mind them not being written to durable storage).

Re: Building an ARM64 home server the hard way

#37

Post by johnklos »

tbrock wrote: post #23

You could do this for cheaper (and with more ram) using a raspberry pi 4 with a usb nvme ssd, it’s got gigabit ethernet and is arm64. Sure you have two less cores than this solution but it’s more likely to be supported over time and once you get the SD card out of the mix the I/O is solid. I’ve been surprised by how much the SD card throughput was limiting the experience. I run arch Linux arm on mine and it’s a fanta…

> cheaper

No, you can't, unless you know of some source of retail priced Raspberry Pi 4s.

In some basic tests (compiling, ffmpeg), the Pi 4 and the Rock Pro 64 are within a small percentage of difference in performance.

Re: Building an ARM64 home server the hard way

#38

Post by candiddevmike »

tyingq wrote: post #25
znpy wrote: post #22

> The total cost comes to around €350 A few weeks ago I bought an used intel nuc7 with a 7th gen core i5… for 150€. It came with a 120gb ssd, 4gb ram and a power brick. I still don’t see the value in this SBCs used as home servers.

The Lenovo "Tiny" machines are also cheap on eBay, even one with a Ryzen 5 and 8Gb RAM for ~$140USD. Though there are reasons to specifically want an ARM64 machine for builds, etc.

I just want something small with ECC RAM

Re: Building an ARM64 home server the hard way

#39

Post by TheCoelacanth »

radiator wrote: post #26
doublepg23 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the way. An x86 NUC/Mini PC/Thin client smokes the ARM SBC market.

Are there any boxes without a graphics card or at least with a primitive one? So that they would be more economical in case you only need them for the role of a server?

None of them have a dedicated GPU, just a low-powered one built into the CPU. Using a CPU without an integrated GPU would only shave a few dollars off the cost, so I don't that is a common choice.

Re: Building an ARM64 home server the hard way

#40

Post by speed_spread »

andai wrote: post #13

Somewhat tangential but is Arch really suitable for servers? Most Arch users I know still prefer Debian for servers. Yet I know at least one company that uses them for servers, which surprised me. I know the Arch breaking meme is overblown but for a server I'd still want something with less moving parts.

Arch is totally fine for a home server.
Post reply on HN