Re: Armbian

[Reco <recoverym4n@enotuniq.net>]

	Hi.

On Sun, Feb 02, 2020 at 05:33:43PM +0000, Phil Endecott wrote:
> What do you know about Armbian?  What do you think?

Own kernel, mostly Debian userland.
An interesting set of patches on top of vanilla kernel, definitely
controversial approach to DFSG.
Also, Armbian uses cross-compilation to build their packages, and it's a
good question if someone there had a single thought about building
packages in a reproducible way.


> I recently bought an ODROID-HC1 to use as a basic NAS.

ORDOID HC2 works perfectly with the stock Debian packages only from the
main archive (as of buster), and a couple of blobs. Judging from [1] -
same goes for HC1, save for the bootloader and blobs.


> It's an interesting board with an Exynos Coretex-A15 SoC and Ethernet
> and SATA connectors,

USB-based Ethernet and a single SATA connector, to be specific.
That severely limits overall usefulness of the board for NAS purpose.
Of course, if 300Mbps over unencrypted NFSv4 and a lack of disk
redundancy is something you're content with - my congratulations with
the purchase.
I use HC2 as a backup host only.


> and a nice mechanical design for a single-disk NAS.

Passive cooling is not enough for HC2.
I had to resort to putting two HC2s to USB-powered laptop cooling pad,
else prolonged use of HDD heated the boards to 70C and more.
YMMV if your plan to use SSD.


> Typically for ODROID it has manufacturer support only Ubuntu and
> Android,

... and said support is not that great in my experience.
Also, if ODROID says "Ubuntu", they really mean "Ubuntu with our 4.9
Android kernel and a ungodly pile of blobs just for the fun of it".


> so I looked for good ways to install Debian.  There is a DebianOn wiki
> page but it's very convoluted.

[1] basically tells you that some assembly is required, and tells about
the process. Not that hard, if you ask me.
Of course, it would be better if the page told about running d-i on a
board (perfectly possible BTW save the u-boot part) - but apparently
page's author is a big fan of debootstrap.
There are harder ARM boards in that regard (Raspberry Pi 4 or ODROID N2
to name a few).


> Very briefly, Armbian's main strength seems to be that they
> have configurations and/or patches for U-Boot, the kernel, and
> related stuff for a good selection of ARM boards which are
> kept up to date and seem to work pretty reliably.

I've yet to see an announcement from Armbian at oss-security maillist.
E-mails from Debian Developers land at oss-security within a day of
publishing DSA.

Reco

[1] https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/OdroidHC1