Building an ARM64 home server the hard way
jforberg.se
Building an ARM64 home server the hard way
1–10 of 119 posts
Re: Building an ARM64 home server the hard way
#2For the Pine family of SBCs I highly recommend installing Tow-Boot - https://tow-boot.org/ - on the SPI flash memory to allow yourself much better boot options, including booting directly from NVMe so you don't need to keep the MicroSD card plugged-in.
Re: Building an ARM64 home server the hard way
#3I 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 to have weird kernel builds, etc),
Re: Building an ARM64 home server the hard way
#4I 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…
I moved from a Pi setup to a second hand Lenovo M900 tiny PC, with 24GB of RAM and nvme drive and it works great. The power efficiency is obviously not as good as the Pi but it's a reasonable trade off
Re: Building an ARM64 home server the hard way
#5I 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…
The beefier alternative you're looking for is possibly the Radxa Rock5B, which has proper M.2 slot and comes in a 16GB version. Hardware support for it isn't entirely mainlined yet, but a lot of development is happening week by week. Debian runs well on it.
Re: Building an ARM64 home server the hard way
#6I 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?
Re: Building an ARM64 home server the hard way
#7For the Pine family of SBCs I highly recommend installing Tow-Boot - https://tow-boot.org/ - on the SPI flash memory to allow yourself much better boot options, including booting directly from NVMe so you don't need to keep the MicroSD card plugged-in.
Does this have a mechanism for automatic redundant OS upgrades? I just built a Yocto-based distribution for a board based on rk3399, but the currently integrated U-Boot is not in the best state. This could be a great alternative if it really is a bit easier to integrate/build upon.
Re: Building an ARM64 home server the hard way
#8For the Pine family of SBCs I highly recommend installing Tow-Boot - https://tow-boot.org/ - on the SPI flash memory to allow yourself much better boot options, including booting directly from NVMe so you don't need to keep the MicroSD card plugged-in.
Yes, I considered that and agree that it would have been nicer! I didn't pursue it for this project because my jury-rigged SD boot was working fine and I wanted to move on to other parts of the system.
Re: Building an ARM64 home server the hard way
#9I 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…
It’s a bit of a sledgehammer approach, but a Nuc with Proxmox is pretty excellent. You can even use 10gbe via thunderbolt (or the pci slot on the larger Nucs).
Re: Building an ARM64 home server the hard way
#10For the Pine family of SBCs I highly recommend installing Tow-Boot - https://tow-boot.org/ - on the SPI flash memory to allow yourself much better boot options, including booting directly from NVMe so you don't need to keep the MicroSD card plugged-in.
Does this have a mechanism for automatic redundant OS upgrades? I just built a Yocto-based distribution for a board based on rk3399, but the currently integrated U-Boot is not in the best state. This could be a great alternative if it really is a bit easier to integrate/build upon.
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.