ARM Board Notes and Experiences

Raspberry Pi

I originally got into Raspberry Pi to set up a Docker cluster environment — mainly because they were cheap and power-efficient. Bought 3 Raspberry Pi 2 boards for around 600+ yuan. Back then, running Docker on ARM was still a novel concept.

I used Raspberry Pi to build a Docker cluster environment, following the Hypriot blog.

CubieBoard

Getting Docker running on ARM was a major challenge back then — official support was poor, community documentation was sparse, and it required a lot of trial and error.

• Installing Docker

  • Option: Hypriot (as of March 2017, version docker 1.11.1). Suitable for users who want to quickly get started with Docker on ARM, with relatively complete documentation.

    shell

    1	$ apt-get install -y apt-transport-https

    • Add repository key
    shell

    1	$ wget -q https://packagecloud.io/gpg.key -O - | sudo apt-key add -

    • Add repository
    shell

    1 2	$ echo 'deb https://packagecloud.io/Hypriot/Schatzkiste/debian/ jessie main' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hypriot.list $ apt-get update

    • Install Hypriot
    shell

    1 2	$ apt-get install -y docker-hypriot $ systemctl enable docker

  • Option: Dockerproject (follows official updates, as of March 2017, version 17.03-ce). Suitable for users who need the latest Docker features and long-term maintenance.

    shell

    1 2	$ sudo apt-get update $ sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https ca-certificates

    • Add repository
    shell

    1	$ sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://p80.pool.sks-keyservers.net:80 --recv-keys 58118E89F3A912897C070ADBF76221572C52609D

    Use the following command to add the APT source to source.list (replace <REPO> with the corresponding value from “Table 1: dockerproject mapping” below):

    shell

    1	$ echo "<REPO>" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list

    • Install Docker-Engine
    shell

    1 2	$ apt-get update $ apt-get install -y docker-engine

• Cubietruck (OS: armbian) Issues and Notes

  • External hard drive hanging issue and resolution: Reference: Arch hdparm

    Values 1-127 permit spin-down, 128-254 do not and 255 disables advanced power management altogether (if the drive supports it).

    Values 1 to 240 are in 5 second steps, values 241 to 251 are steps of 30 minutes,

    see the table below.

    Resolution:

    shell

    1	# hdparm -B 127 /dev/sdx

  • Firewall/GFW bypass Used PogoPlug’s shadowsocks as an SS5 proxy, and used tsocks tool to update software.

  • Building Gogs with Docker: Used PogoPlug’s Dockerfile and build.sh from the official Git repository, adding proxy settings for deployment

    shell

    1 2	export http_proxy=http://192.168.208.88:8118 export https_proxy=http://192.168.208.88:8118

    Modify the Dockerfile as follows:

    dockerfile

    1 2 3 4 5 6

    RUN export http_proxy=http://192.168.208.88:8118 \ && export https_proxy=http://192.168.208.88:8118 \ && apk --no-cache --no-progress add curl \ && curl -x 192.168.208.88:8118 -L https://github.com/tianon/gosu/releases/download/1.9/gosu-armhf -o /usr/sbin/gosu \ && chmod +x /usr/sbin/gosu \ && apk --no-cache --no-progress add ca-certificates bash git linux-pam s6 openssh socat tzdata

PogoPlug

PogoPlug was actually a NAS box that was quite popular back in the day. It got phased out for various reasons, so I repurposed it as a proxy server — which is probably the origin of the “broken dog” nickname.

• Install OpenWrt, deploy shadowsocks to provide SS5 proxy service

  • Open Luci, navigate to “System” - “Software” - “Configuration” tab, then comment out the following line in settings:
  shell

  1	#option check_signature 1

  • Then add the software sources at the end:
  shell

  1 2	src/gz openwrt_dist http://openwrt-dist.sourceforge.net/packages/OpenWrt/base/oxnas src/gz openwrt_dist_luci http://openwrt-dist.sourceforge.net/packages/OpenWrt/luci

  • Update sources and install shadowsocks

• Provide NFS service This was mainly for sharing files with other devices at home, such as mounting shared storage for the Raspberry Pi cluster.

Orange Pi

• Orange Pi Zero (OS: armbian) Issues and Notes:

  • Used with the OrangePiNAS board, mainly for building a small home NAS to store documents and media files.

  

• Orange Pi One (OS: dietpi) Issues and Notes:

  • Default en_GB locale causes frequent errors. Changed to zh_CN. The specific symptom was garbled text in some command-line tools and system logs.

Nano Pi

• Nano Pi Neo (OS: armbian) Issues and Notes: The standout feature of the Nano Pi Neo is its incredibly small size — about thumb-sized — making it suitable for embedding into other devices.

• Nano Pi M3 (OS: Kali Linux) Issues and Notes:

  • Kali Linux provides official image downloads: Kali Linux ARM Images Download

  • Expand SD card: Kali images don’t automatically utilize the remaining SD card space, so manual expansion is required.

    • Check the starting sector of the second partition, needed later
    shell

    1	cat /sys/block/mmcblk0/mmcblk0p2/start

    • Launch fdisk disk management tool
    shell

    1	fdisk /dev/mmcblk0

    • Delete partition
    shell

    1	Command (m for help): d

    • Delete the second partition
    shell

    1	Partition number (1,2, default 2): 2

    • Create a new partition
    shell

    1	Command (m for help): n

    • Create primary partition
    shell

    1 2 3 4

    Partition type p primary (1 primary, 0 extended, 3 free) e extended (container for logical partitions) Select (default p): p

    • Select partition 2
    shell

    1	Partition number (2-4, default 2): 2

    • Enter the starting sector of the second partition
    shell

    1	First sector (125001-31116287, default 126976): 125001

    • Enter the last sector, press Enter directly to use all remaining space

    • Write the partition table

    shell

    1	Command (m for help): w

    • After rebooting, run the following command, otherwise the capacity will remain unchanged — resize the partition
    shell

    1	resize2fs /dev/mmcblk0p2

    • Expansion complete. Use df -lh to verify the capacity has been expanded to the full available physical capacity of the SD card.

Appendix:

Table 1: dockerproject mapping