07-16-2022, 04:10 PM
I was surprised how responsive dmozes is, very rare in open-source for developers to be so involved on low-level issues! I have a bunch of SBCs, and would like to keep FreeBSD on a couple and run 1 Linux distro on all of the rest, including my Pinebook Pro. My workstation is currently FreeBSD however it will likely go back to just MX Linux or dual-boot MX Linux and Xubuntu. Right now it hosts my main fileserver, a ZFSz1 3 disk 17TB array. Something that can be offloaded into a VM. Enter Slackware. I've been hungry to get away from having different Linux distros on all of my machines however I handle change as well as Debian-stable does so finding the motivation to learn something new has been limited. I don't need 2 running fileservers and 2 offline backups but it is fun. Don't want all of my eggs in one basket either, so a mix of FreeBSD and possibly Slackware now is preferred.
Debian forks were my goto for over a decade however their official releases supporting the RockPro64 and Pinebook Pro require tweaks to get a working OS, and you have to dig around to find the information. Slackware has an excellent installation tutorial, provides all of the software, including the SPI boot software, to make sure a user can install. As a matter of fact Slackware has been the easiest OS to install to my PBP because all of the necessary software and knowledge is in one place.
I look forward to spending some time soon playing with Slackware as a server too. I have several different SATA to PCIe adapters based on either Marvell 88SE92XX or JMB 585 chipsets, and one that is a hybrid with both Marvell and JMB on the board, a bunch of different old HDDs and SDDs, and an old 650W PSU that I modified to use as a powersource for a RockPro64 NAS.
There was a company that had built a NAS on the same ARM CPU the RockPro64 uses, RK3399, and Armbian supported it, however the company folded last year and the NAS are hard to come by. It was essentially a RK3399, memory, and with the SATA to PCIe built into the main board. Helios was their name. There were some reliability issues people reported having, and I wondered if it were a heat think like the Raspberry Pi 3s had. The boards on the Raspberry Pi 3's did not dissipate heat uniformly so the CPUs were very hot and components were known to break. They fixed it for the 3B+, thermo scans of both boards showed how much more evenly the heat was conducted across the main board. Curious if anyone has looked at a RockPro64 or the Helios under load through an IR camera and seen if the issue is present. It certainly feels like the LAN component gets hot during heavy data transfers.
In my Pine64 NAS cases I had installed special aluminum fins to force air through the 30mm high heatsink, and also another path between/above/below the HDDs then through the rear fan. Since the SATA to PCIe adapter forms a sort of duct from the one vent mesh to the vent mesh in front of the fan, and the Pine64 supplied heatsink fins are rotated 90 degrees, it is important to get that air snaking around the SATA to PCIe adapter, over the front of the RockPro64 board, through the CPU heatsink, and-and-AND between the SATA to PCIe adapter and heatsink, over the LAN module then back towards the exhaust fan. Even with the low-profile CPU heatsink/fan combo, or the 20mm high heatsink with a fan, the air needs to be duct through there or you can get a situation were it creates a sort of air damn between the fresh cool air coming in and exhuasting out, and the hot air around the CPU. Ducting the air around in an S-like shape also helps cool the SATA to PCIe adapter, which can get very warm and then performance decreases. I've gone so far as to also install a bathroom exhaust fan in the room that hosts my SBCs and servers, venting the warm air outside in the summer, and into our large room in the basement in the winter. Though in confined places an open door and box fan work well too.
Debian forks were my goto for over a decade however their official releases supporting the RockPro64 and Pinebook Pro require tweaks to get a working OS, and you have to dig around to find the information. Slackware has an excellent installation tutorial, provides all of the software, including the SPI boot software, to make sure a user can install. As a matter of fact Slackware has been the easiest OS to install to my PBP because all of the necessary software and knowledge is in one place.
I look forward to spending some time soon playing with Slackware as a server too. I have several different SATA to PCIe adapters based on either Marvell 88SE92XX or JMB 585 chipsets, and one that is a hybrid with both Marvell and JMB on the board, a bunch of different old HDDs and SDDs, and an old 650W PSU that I modified to use as a powersource for a RockPro64 NAS.
There was a company that had built a NAS on the same ARM CPU the RockPro64 uses, RK3399, and Armbian supported it, however the company folded last year and the NAS are hard to come by. It was essentially a RK3399, memory, and with the SATA to PCIe built into the main board. Helios was their name. There were some reliability issues people reported having, and I wondered if it were a heat think like the Raspberry Pi 3s had. The boards on the Raspberry Pi 3's did not dissipate heat uniformly so the CPUs were very hot and components were known to break. They fixed it for the 3B+, thermo scans of both boards showed how much more evenly the heat was conducted across the main board. Curious if anyone has looked at a RockPro64 or the Helios under load through an IR camera and seen if the issue is present. It certainly feels like the LAN component gets hot during heavy data transfers.
In my Pine64 NAS cases I had installed special aluminum fins to force air through the 30mm high heatsink, and also another path between/above/below the HDDs then through the rear fan. Since the SATA to PCIe adapter forms a sort of duct from the one vent mesh to the vent mesh in front of the fan, and the Pine64 supplied heatsink fins are rotated 90 degrees, it is important to get that air snaking around the SATA to PCIe adapter, over the front of the RockPro64 board, through the CPU heatsink, and-and-AND between the SATA to PCIe adapter and heatsink, over the LAN module then back towards the exhaust fan. Even with the low-profile CPU heatsink/fan combo, or the 20mm high heatsink with a fan, the air needs to be duct through there or you can get a situation were it creates a sort of air damn between the fresh cool air coming in and exhuasting out, and the hot air around the CPU. Ducting the air around in an S-like shape also helps cool the SATA to PCIe adapter, which can get very warm and then performance decreases. I've gone so far as to also install a bathroom exhaust fan in the room that hosts my SBCs and servers, venting the warm air outside in the summer, and into our large room in the basement in the winter. Though in confined places an open door and box fan work well too.
Quartz64, RockPro64, PinePhone Mobian, PineBook Pro, PineTime, and all the trimmings that make FOSS fun.
