Looking for a freedom respecting low consumption device to use as a server

10 Antworten [Letzter Beitrag]
a_slacker_here
Offline
Beigetreten: 06/29/2013

Greetings:

I'm looking for a device as freedom respecting as possible with low power consumption to use a server. My idea is to make a matrix instance for myself and hosting a couple of bots and bridges for matrix and irc.

Any suggestions?

I want to run Debian on it (Sad that Trisquel doesn't support ARM at the moment).

Someone suggested me this:

https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/Home-Server/Pioneer-FreedomBox-HSK/

I'm unable to find what the device uses to boot up the OS (I will contact them after reading your replies)

Thank you for your time.

Ark74

I am a member!

I am a translator!

Offline
Beigetreten: 07/15/2009

Warning: Spoiler ahead for the 10.0 release, please keep reading at your own will =)

Trisquel doesn't support devices, but it does support arm architecture in the 10.0 release, also known as Nabia.

armhf, to be more specific.

So you can use the same repositories you normally use for trisquel software in an armhf compatible os.

deb http://archive.trisquel.org/trisquel nabia main
deb-src http://archive.trisquel.org/trisquel nabia main
...
etc

This arch support got introduced in Nabia, and I'm sure it could create a lot of expectation, but for now I would suggest to take it very calm, as there is a ton of background work pending as the gap between Ubuntu and Trisquel keeps growing, and the infrastructure design is also being improved.

AFAICT, there is no plan to support any SBC/Phone anytime soon, but for those how want to start beta testing things at arm and want to contribute back their findings can use the wiki or their own blogs, etc.

So hopefully this will make your 2022 a bit brighter.

Cheers and happy GNU Year!

Piriponzolo
Offline
Beigetreten: 02/19/2016

""""Trisquel doesn't support devices, but it does support arm architecture in the 10.0 release, also known as Nabia. armhf, to be more specific.""""

Do you think it is so possible to install Triquel 10 on Pine64 tablet?

Ark74

I am a member!

I am a translator!

Offline
Beigetreten: 07/15/2009

As I said, there is no official support for any device any time soon.
But testing and documenting will be a nice contribution, it might require experienced users though.

https://trisquel.info/es/forum/teaser-trisquel-10-running-arm-laptop-pinebook-pro

Piriponzolo
Offline
Beigetreten: 02/19/2016

Is it correct if I download "nabia.armhf.tar.gz" from https://cdbuilds.trisquel.org/ ?

Avron

I am a translator!

Offline
Beigetreten: 08/18/2020

Thanks, this is very good.

Is that architecture the one of the Allwinner A20?

I noticed that https://cdbuilds.trisquel.org/nabia.armhf.tar.gz is from September, do you plan to make a newer one?

I suppose what is needed to use that is steps similar to what is described in https://wiki.parabola.nu/ARM_Installation_Guide, correct? Indeed, that is not straightforward.

Besides the tarball, does Nabia include some kind of updates of packages for armhf, like it does for amd64?

If the architecture is the one of the Allwinner A20, I may try with a spare Olinuxino Lime 2 board, although I don't know if I can manage to make something boot.

EDIT: If this is built to run with Pinebook Pro, RK3399 chip, using ARMv8 instruction set, this probably won't with an Olinuxino Lime 2, A20, using ARMv7 instruction set.

Piriponzolo
Offline
Beigetreten: 02/19/2016

Is it correct if I download "nabia.armhf.tar.gz" from https://cdbuilds.trisquel.org/ ?

Avron

I am a translator!

Offline
Beigetreten: 08/18/2020

https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/Home-Server/Pioneer-FreedomBox-HSK/

I'm unable to find what the device uses to boot up the OS (I will contact them after reading your replies)

I am not sure whether the question is about which medium you can boot from or about the bootloader. The bootloader is U-boot and it is entirely free software. As for the medium, I think you need to boot from the sdcard or, if you get the version of the Olinuxino Lime 2 with onboard eMMC, you can boot from the sdcard or the onboard eMMC (but I did not do that yet).

According to https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Allwinner, it is feasible to install a version of U-boot on the sdcard and boot on some SSD/HDD but I have never tried that. I tried some things based on that about one year ago and had no success, but it could be my fault.

There was (and maybe still is) an issue with recent board revisions on which ethernet wasn't working, the fix is to modify U-boot. I tried to do it myself but what I produced does not boot, so I am probably doing it wrong.

However, the image at https://www.freedombox.org/download/a20-olinuxino-lime2/ was confirmed to work with recent board revisions (I installed using a previous version and it worked). I assume it is free software only as the sources in /etc/apt are only from Debian main.

Parabola officially supports this board but I think the Parabola maintainers do not have the latest board revision and I had it working by installing an image kindly provided by someone else (the guy is a Hyperbola maintainer, so I trust that he included only free software). As I mentioned, the result of my own compilation of U-boot did not work. I don't know whether Parabola has provided an updated U-boot package that works. I plan to look at that again in January as I need to setup another server.

a_slacker_here
Offline
Beigetreten: 06/29/2013

U-boot, that's what I was asking for ;-)

Will probably buy from them, all people I've talked to said good things about Olimex.

Seems everything is libre so far... why not the RYF certificate? is there a blob I'm not seeing? or is it because it comes with Debian?

Avron

I am a translator!

Offline
Beigetreten: 08/18/2020

Olimex recommends using the images they distribute, Debian and Ubuntu. I tried their official Debian image one year ago, it had non-free in the apt sources. I had the impression it was in order to support some of the USB wifi adapter they sold but I am not sure. This was rather surprising as they sell https://www.olimex.com/Products/USB-Modules/MOD-WIFI-AR9271-ANT/ which I think works with free software only.

I had no problem with Olimex for delivery (incredibly fast) and I think they try to help users but the first advice if you ask for support is to use their images and they tend to advise Ubuntu rather than Debian.

My primary reason to still recommend the Olinuxino Lime 2 is that it is officially supported by Parabola (but this is "the Arch way", you are supposed to setup everything on your own) and used by the Freedombox project.

a_slacker_here
Offline
Beigetreten: 06/29/2013

I see...

If the system can work without the nonfree repo of Debian, I will gladly purchase the system.

I just asked a friend who has the machine and I made him run the vrms command:

[code]

"No non-free or contrib packages installed on freedombox! rms would be proud."

[/code]

All seems fine :)