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Repurposing my old Chromebook to a low power home server

tamas.dev

61–70 of 81 posts

Re: Repurposing my old Chromebook to a low power home server

#61
post #48
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

M.2 case for Raspberry Pi 4 https://www.argon40.com/argon-one-m-2-case-for-raspberry-pi-...

But this (naturally) goes over USB, too. So you're wasting bandwidth (and money).

USB isn't a big issue if UASP is supported.

EG 149MB/s on dd writes.

See https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/uasp-makes-raspberry-...

Re: Repurposing my old Chromebook to a low power home server

#62
post #17

My raspberry pi 4 has been running as a home server and gitlab runner under my tv stand for a few months now and works great! I just need to set up a backup scheme at some point since the whole thing runs on an sd card. It seems easier than ever to repurpose old hardware for home servers with docker and all the great projects out there!

My main gripe about the Raspberry Pi is the SD card unreliability. I know you can boot from USB now but I wish there was a way to integrate an SSD directly on the board (something in the m.2 2242 form.factor) to make it more resilient and also faster. I'll probably go with a small NUC or something like that instead, especially if there's some AMD Ryzen systems coming out in that form factor.

Seeed have a nice looking range of x86 for this type of application: https://www.seeedstudio.com/ODYSSEY-c-1492.html

Re: Repurposing my old Chromebook to a low power home server

#63
My old chromebook is being repurposed as a chromebook. My daughter's school has asked kids to bring computers to class this year. Mostly for Google classroom usage between remote and in person days. We still have the 11" Acer I got her 5 years ago for $170 and it still runs ok. I taped over the cracks in the case and now she has a great tabeltop device and if she loses it, I don't care.

Re: Repurposing my old Chromebook to a low power home server

#64
post #17

My raspberry pi 4 has been running as a home server and gitlab runner under my tv stand for a few months now and works great! I just need to set up a backup scheme at some point since the whole thing runs on an sd card. It seems easier than ever to repurpose old hardware for home servers with docker and all the great projects out there!

My main gripe about the Raspberry Pi is the SD card unreliability. I know you can boot from USB now but I wish there was a way to integrate an SSD directly on the board (something in the m.2 2242 form.factor) to make it more resilient and also faster. I'll probably go with a small NUC or something like that instead, especially if there's some AMD Ryzen systems coming out in that form factor.

What about using high endurance SD cards, like the ones used on dashcams? They're can be more than twice as expensive but I haven't had one failing on me yet.

Re: Repurposing my old Chromebook to a low power home server

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seconding this. X200/210/220 are dirt cheap, come with modern CPUs, cooling fans (!), quality Ethernet ports and run x86-64 containers unmodified. You can cram 16GB of RAM and SATA SSDs into an X220. Much less hassle and similar price to an RPi.

Please don't use the X220 or T420 for servers though.. They're the go-to main laptops for many Thinkpad fans because they're so inexpensive and very well-built for everyday use. There are only so many left. I can't imagine using another laptop besides my T420, I'm not sure a better laptop exists and I'm gonna have to take it to my grave if Lenovo doesn't get their act together and release another Thinkpad with a full…

T430 is fine too, its my daily driver and has the same charger as the T420.

I run SmartOS on another t430 with a cracked screen which has a bunch of guest KVM and zones. Runs ZFS in a mirror and 16G ram, backed by an APC unit for the modem router.

I blogged recently about my setup here:

https://russell.ballestrini.net/weechat-on-boot-in-a-tmux-se...

(Hosted on said laptop)

Re: Repurposing my old Chromebook to a low power home server

#66
post #17

My raspberry pi 4 has been running as a home server and gitlab runner under my tv stand for a few months now and works great! I just need to set up a backup scheme at some point since the whole thing runs on an sd card. It seems easier than ever to repurpose old hardware for home servers with docker and all the great projects out there!

My main gripe about the Raspberry Pi is the SD card unreliability. I know you can boot from USB now but I wish there was a way to integrate an SSD directly on the board (something in the m.2 2242 form.factor) to make it more resilient and also faster. I'll probably go with a small NUC or something like that instead, especially if there's some AMD Ryzen systems coming out in that form factor.

> My main gripe about the Raspberry Pi is the SD card unreliability.

It's a very real issue. I managed to burn out a SD card that wasn't even being used, i.e. only the /boot partition was on the SD card, and it pointed at an external drive for the root. Presumably that means the heat alone of being connected to a Pi was enough to burn out the card.

Re: Repurposing my old Chromebook to a low power home server

#67
post #28

One reason to do this is because, fan-less intel Celeron Chromebooks are the most accessible x86 Single Board Computer(SBC) currently available. If you have a x86 specific workflow, then there are not much choices out there at such low power/price scale e.g. I used one for running a Chromium puppeteer task, as Chromium was nearly unusable in similar or better specced ARM SBCs running Linux. But that's a one-off examp…

Is that because Chromium isn't as optimized for ARM as it is for x86? Or is it just because the ARM SBCs are lower speed cores? Curious to know more specifically

I believe believe both to be the reason, but I'm of opinion that optimization issue for ARM contributes more to this problem than lack of power.

Chromebooks ditching ARM seems to add credibility to my suspicion, in spite of ARM chromebooks being more favourable to run Android apps.

Re: Repurposing my old Chromebook to a low power home server

#68
post #57

One reason to do this is because, fan-less intel Celeron Chromebooks are the most accessible x86 Single Board Computer(SBC) currently available. If you have a x86 specific workflow, then there are not much choices out there at such low power/price scale e.g. I used one for running a Chromium puppeteer task, as Chromium was nearly unusable in similar or better specced ARM SBCs running Linux. But that's a one-off examp…

One thing to keep in mind: support for running generic Linux on anything past Braswell (so, 2016 or so) in a Chromebook is pretty much impossible - the replacement firmware doesnt exist, or has major issues like not supporting suspend/resume. Most Apollo Lake and newer Chromebooks support running Debian in a VM inside ChromeOS though - there is quite a bit you can do this way.

That's a shame, anyways Crostini has improved a lot, I tested the same workflow mentioned in parent and had no specific issues. But there's no USB-passthrough yet and so using Bluetooth or other USB dependent hardware isn't possible in Crostini yet.

Re: Repurposing my old Chromebook to a low power home server

#69
post #23

I use Asus EeePC subnotebooks for that. They're about US$30-$50 on eBay, and there are models with 64-bit CPUs. I run the CPU and disk test, wipe the disk, and install XUbuntu. A few script mods make the device stay on when the lid is closed, but the screen turns off. It's more convenient than packaging up a Raspberry PI. You get keyboard, screen, disk, power supply, and battery, plus some USB ports, in one compact u…

I disagree, a 10yr old laptop, that was designed to be bargain bin parts, for a now dead niche of netbooks, that has 10yr old parts can't compete with a pi4 for $30 ($50 nicely equipped w/ case and SD card) or a pi nano.

It's not even close.

The LCD, battery and I/O keyboard/mouse/usb are nice but, no hdmi, just VGA...

It makes sense if it's Free but even then, the pi simplifies this so much and then you have no moving parts.

Re: Repurposing my old Chromebook to a low power home server

#70
post #23

I use Asus EeePC subnotebooks for that. They're about US$30-$50 on eBay, and there are models with 64-bit CPUs. I run the CPU and disk test, wipe the disk, and install XUbuntu. A few script mods make the device stay on when the lid is closed, but the screen turns off. It's more convenient than packaging up a Raspberry PI. You get keyboard, screen, disk, power supply, and battery, plus some USB ports, in one compact u…

I disagree, a 10yr old laptop, that was designed to be bargain bin parts, for a now dead niche of netbooks, that has 10yr old parts can't compete with a pi4 for $30 ($50 nicely equipped w/ case and SD card) or a pi nano. It's not even close. The LCD, battery and I/O keyboard/mouse/usb are nice but, no hdmi, just VGA... It makes sense if it's Free but even then, the pi simplifies this so much and then you have no movi…

Netbook has SATA and nice enclosure for hard drive. But the main reason is reuse.
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