PINE64

Hey everyone,

Having toyed around with the pine64 for a couple of weeks, I feel that now I zeroed in on a real day-to-day purpose for it. I want it to act as a NAS/ sync server. While I know that I could just get BitTorrent sync + samba installed on it and live happily ever after, I am wondering if it would be possible to build omv for the pine64. From what I remember omv uses Debian (right?) and not Ubuntu - hence my question, would it be possible to install omv on top of ubuntu?
 Cheers, 

Luke

i'm also interested by that

(04-17-2016, 06:17 PM)Luke Wrote: [ -> ]Hey everyone,

Having toyed around with the pine64 for a couple of weeks, I feel that now I zeroed in on a real day-to-day purpose for it. I want it to act as a NAS/ sync server. While I know that I could just get BitTorrent sync + samba installed on it and live happily ever after, I am wondering if it would be possible to build omv for the pine64. From what I remember omv uses Debian (right?) and not Ubuntu - hence my question, would it be possible to install omv on top of ubuntu?
 Cheers, 

Luke

Hi Luke,

When you say "would be possible to build omv for the pine64", what exactly do you have in mind? Are you suggesting a omv image a user can simply download, burn and boot, then have a wizard type walk-through to get it up and running?

I ask as I've always thought the real advantage of ovm was it really does do what they say in the project readme... "simple and easy to use out-of-the-box solution"


If that is the goal then I would very much support the idea..

To answer the Debian question, the Debian Jessie Images (3.10.65 BSP Kernel) is up and running (all be it with the currently linux limitations), so I guess the first thing to do is a manual install of the required packages, omv framework and plugin's and see what run's.

I suspect there will be lots of opportunities to overcome challenges ... If enough people are interested we should give it a go....

(05-05-2016, 11:30 PM)frewind Wrote: [ -> ]

(04-17-2016, 06:17 PM)Luke Wrote: [ -> ]Hey everyone,

Having toyed around with the pine64 for a couple of weeks, I feel that now I zeroed in on a real day-to-day purpose for it. I want it to act as a NAS/ sync server. While I know that I could just get BitTorrent sync + samba installed on it and live happily ever after, I am wondering if it would be possible to build omv for the pine64. From what I remember omv uses Debian (right?) and not Ubuntu - hence my question, would it be possible to install omv on top of ubuntu?
 Cheers, 

Luke

Hi Luke,

When you say "would be possible to build omv for the pine64", what exactly do you have in mind? Are you suggesting a omv image a user can simply download, burn and boot, then have a wizard type walk-through to get it up and running?

I ask as I've always thought the real advantage of ovm was it really does do what they say in the project readme... "simple and easy to use out-of-the-box solution"


If that is the goal then I would very much support the idea..

To answer the Debian question, the Debian Jessie Images (3.10.65 BSP Kernel) is up and running (all be it with the currently linux limitations), so I guess the first thing to do is a manual install of the required packages, omv framework and plugin's and see what run's.

I suspect there will be lots of opportunities to overcome challenges ... If enough people are interested we should give it a go....

Thank you for responding frewind! 

Yes, I now know that there is a debian img, and if I've known this earlier I would have manually installed the framework and packages. 
Both my pine64's have now their assigned purposes (one an irc server - see sig; the other a wordress server), but I may just get another one (or two) in the coming months and will then make it into a omv server


Lets stay in touch !

(05-06-2016, 05:52 AM)Luke Wrote: [ -> ]Both my pine64's have now their assigned purposes (one an irc server - see sig; the other a wordress server), but I may just get another one (or two) in the coming months and will then make it into a omv server

BTW: Pine64 is not listed here for a simple reason. Since devices with only one real USB 2.0 host port that is limited to 650mA current are always a bad choice for OMV or any other NAS try. But if it has to be slow, expensive and complicated then Pine64 is also an option

(05-06-2016, 06:05 AM)tkaiser Wrote: [ -> ]

(05-06-2016, 05:52 AM)Luke Wrote: [ -> ]Both my pine64's have now their assigned purposes (one an irc server - see sig; the other a wordress server), but I may just get another one (or two) in the coming months and will then make it into a omv server

BTW: Pine64 is not listed here for a simple reason. Since devices with only one real USB 2.0 host port that is limited to 650mA current are always a bad choice for OMV or any other NAS try. But if it has to be slow, expensive and complicated then Pine64 is also an option

ha! thank you for the link : 

My requirements are very modest however, so I think that if I got it working it would be perfectly sufficient for my needs. As a side note, do you think that adding a an externally powered USB hub could remedy the power issue? 

Cheers!

(05-06-2016, 06:10 AM)Luke Wrote: [ -> ]I think that if I got it working it would be perfectly sufficient for my needs. As a side note, do you think that adding a an externally powered USB hub could remedy the power issue? 

Such a powered hub is a prerequisite for external USB disks that don't come with an own PSU. Or the Pine64+ with 2GB DRAM and jumper setting DC-IN instead of BAT when also powered through the Euler pins. But in this mode you can't use a connected 3.7V battery to play UPS.

Given the DC-IN problems (undervoltage, max. current limited to approx. 1.8A by Micro USB), the current limitation of the USB port and both bandwidth and IOPS limitations of the USB port it simply makes absolutely no sense to use Pine64 as a NAS when way better boards are available. One exception: Being a Plex server since to my surprise Pine64 has enough horsepower to transcode a lot of movies that slower boards running with the 'NAS optimised' A20 would fail on.

(05-06-2016, 06:19 AM)tkaiser Wrote: [ -> ]

(05-06-2016, 06:10 AM)Luke Wrote: [ -> ]I think that if I got it working it would be perfectly sufficient for my needs. As a side note, do you think that adding a an externally powered USB hub could remedy the power issue? 

Such a powered hub is a prerequisite for external USB disks that don't come with an own PSU. Or the Pine64+ with 2GB DRAM and jumper setting DC-IN instead of BAT when also powered through the Euler pins. But in this mode you can't use a connected 3.7V battery to play UPS.

Given the DC-IN problems (undervoltage, max. current limited to approx. 1.8A by Micro USB), the current limitation of the USB port and both bandwidth and IOPS limitations of the USB port it simply makes absolutely no sense to use Pine64 as a NAS when way better boards are available. One exception: Being a Plex server since to my surprise Pine64 has enough horsepower to transcode a lot of movies that slower boards running with the 'NAS optimised' A20 would fail on.

Ok, great, that puts this to rest then

(05-06-2016, 07:04 AM)Luke Wrote: [ -> ]

(05-06-2016, 06:19 AM)tkaiser Wrote: [ -> ]

(05-06-2016, 06:10 AM)Luke Wrote: [ -> ]I think that if I got it working it would be perfectly sufficient for my needs. As a side note, do you think that adding a an externally powered USB hub could remedy the power issue? 

Such a powered hub is a prerequisite for external USB disks that don't come with an own PSU. Or the Pine64+ with 2GB DRAM and jumper setting DC-IN instead of BAT when also powered through the Euler pins. But in this mode you can't use a connected 3.7V battery to play UPS.

Given the DC-IN problems (undervoltage, max. current limited to approx. 1.8A by Micro USB), the current limitation of the USB port and both bandwidth and IOPS limitations of the USB port it simply makes absolutely no sense to use Pine64 as a NAS when way better boards are available. One exception: Being a Plex server since to my surprise Pine64 has enough horsepower to transcode a lot of movies that slower boards running with the 'NAS optimised' A20 would fail on.

Ok, great, that puts this to rest then

Really for NAS use cases I/O bandwidth matters more. A nice A20 equipped Olimex Lime2 for example with a 3.7V battery and connected 2.5" SATA disk is a perfect example for a small, fast and reliable server (since here you don't run in undervoltage problems and the power limitations of the USB ports are higher so that even a spinned down disk when running on battery is not a problem when it suddenly wants to spin up again -- peak consumption 1A). And a few H3 boards do exist that feature 3 real USB host ports instead of just one like with Pine64. And ironically in Pine64 BSP we found an A20 successor called A20E that might be a little bit faster regarding CPU speed than A20 but has still SATA (and maybe an implementation that shows better SATA write speeds). Really: A64 is nice in other areas but not as a NAS.

BTW: I just had a look whether it's as easy to install OMV as it was with Plex, the usual
approach. But this armhf OMV package is somewhat smelly (outdated) and requires PHP5. And while it's possible to install outdated PHP versions it's no good idea. So I dropped the idea since Pine64 is the wrong device for a NAS anyway...

hhhmmm, I guess I'll go another way as well based on the information provided. thanks for the detail