[HN Gopher] Setting Up an RK3588 SBC QEMU Hypervisor with ZFS on...
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       Setting Up an RK3588 SBC QEMU Hypervisor with ZFS on Debian
        
       Author : kumiokun
       Score  : 66 points
       Date   : 2025-01-16 08:31 UTC (14 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (blog.kumio.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (blog.kumio.org)
        
       | Havoc wrote:
       | Had similar stability issues on a related board - orange pi 5
       | plus. Specifically wouldn't reliably come back up on soft reboot
       | 
       | Also there is apparently an arm port of proximity but haven't
       | tried it
        
         | kumiokun wrote:
         | So far have not seen stability issues on the mentioned 6.12
         | current-rockckip-rk3588 kernel but time will tell!
        
           | Havoc wrote:
           | Hmm. Will give that a go in next install.
           | 
           | Other issue I hit was ssh dropping out (but other ports
           | staying online). Think that may be a software bug though
        
         | simpleTaffy wrote:
         | Is proximity another Virtualization tool? A quick search didn't
         | come up with anything, that's why I'm asking.
        
           | tekchip wrote:
           | I assume that's an autocorrect for Proxmox. There is/was a
           | Proxmox porting attempt out there.
           | 
           | I use Orange Pi 5 Plus in my home lab and I've found their
           | builds of Debian are rock solid though a bit sus hosted in a
           | Gdrive and pulling updates from Huawei repos instead of
           | official. They do tend to be one or two kernel versions ahead
           | of Armbian so it's unclear if the added stability is due to
           | kernel version or some other patches and secret sauce. It has
           | been quite some time since I've tried it. Ops 6.12 is well
           | newer than the 6.7 or 8 last time I attempted Proxmox.
           | 
           | I've also found a lot of instability in what SSD you choose.
           | Things are real bad on Samsung but after some research the
           | Lexar nm790 is especially low power and this seems to have
           | resolved my instabilities. There seems to be some kind of
           | power handling issues on the oPi 5 Plus.
        
           | Havoc wrote:
           | Yeah that was a cellphone autocorrect typo - sorry
        
         | TacticalCoder wrote:
         | > Had similar stability issues on a related board
         | 
         | No ECC for an hypervisor running VMs is scary too.
         | 
         | Although ZFS is still useful even without ECC.
        
       | kumiokun wrote:
       | Author here! Currently taking requests for follow-ups you'd like
       | to see for this budding blog where we will stand up cloud
       | together. (Including you Intel N-series diehards, if you flame
       | hard enough I might write something for you too ;) Seriously
       | though I think both platforms have their use-cases. Here we get
       | more cores per buck and less power per node)
        
         | phoronixrly wrote:
         | Kudos for being the author of one of the very few homelab-
         | related posts on HN that does not boil down to just a poor use
         | of a raspberry pi.
         | 
         | I would like to see projects with more, and specifically more
         | diverse and open-source friendly SoCs, based on Allwinner for
         | lower cost stuff (Olimex-produced SBCs), Mediatek for higher
         | price/performance (banana pi, and especially for the WiFi
         | chipsets, it's about time we stopped with the closed Broadcom
         | stuff)
        
       | nonrandomstring wrote:
       | Good work. Probably still a bit precarious for me to try at the
       | moment but the idea of low power SBCs with virt capabilities is
       | intriguing as I like to run very thin VMs to encapsulate a single
       | small application.
        
       | Thev00d00 wrote:
       | Or buy a RPI where you get software that actually works and is
       | supported.
        
         | 3np wrote:
         | With 32G RAM? Besides, manufacturer diversity is a good thing.
         | "Just buy X" comments need to die.
        
         | ducktective wrote:
         | On software side, RPi (or intel N100 for that matter) is the
         | winner but take a look at RK3588 datasheet [1] and tell me of
         | an Arm or x86 SBC that tops what it offers. It even comes with
         | a NPU lol
         | 
         | [1]: https://www.rock-
         | chips.com/uploads/pdf/2022.8.26/192/RK3588%...
        
           | sigmaris wrote:
           | An NPU with no driver support in the main Linux kernel, only
           | in a vendor-provided fork containing dubious-quality drivers:
           | 
           | https://forum.radxa.com/t/lack-of-concern-for-security-in-
           | bs...
           | 
           | https://blog.tomeuvizoso.net/2024/03/rockchip-npu-
           | update-1-w...
        
           | frankharv wrote:
           | You really think RockPi5 is an SBC on par with Advantech and
           | Aaeon?
           | 
           | As a Rock3A owner I can say no. It may look like a real SBC
           | but it is not.
        
         | tekchip wrote:
         | Software support being hand hold-y is nice and all but entirely
         | pointless if the hardware isn't performant enough to run the
         | workloads you want/need.
        
       | nubinetwork wrote:
       | The kernel/dtb support was what held me back from buying a Turing
       | Pi 2, I'm still debating on buying something ampere based
       | instead... the rk3588 has been out for ages, I don't see what the
       | holdup is getting it mainlined.
        
         | buckle8017 wrote:
         | rockchip doesn't really care about mainline support
        
           | bpye wrote:
           | Collabora, thankfully, do -
           | https://gitlab.collabora.com/hardware-
           | enablement/rockchip-35...
        
         | jauntywundrkind wrote:
         | There's been solid progress.
         | 
         | But Rockchip is no longer selling to SBC folk & no longer
         | participating at all in mainlining.
         | 
         | Theres almost no one left to buy chips from, basically. Hope
         | everyone's happy using rpi forever, cause that's where 2025 has
         | left us. :/
         | 
         | MediaTek has some Genio chips they're starting to make
         | available but explorer boards are quite expensive. These new
         | Cix people have an incredible looking 8x A720, which Radxa is
         | using on an upcoming Orion O6 board. But man it is just so sad
         | to see company after company after company collapse & disappear
         | from making chips usable by SBC.
         | 
         | https://www.cnx-software.com/2024/12/21/rockchip-rk3588-main...
        
           | Fnoord wrote:
           | When you start wanting decent RAM, SBC end up being
           | expensive.
           | 
           | Kontron (Fujitsu) have some very low-power, efficient
           | motherboard, the Kontron K3843-B. Also, Odroid-H4+ deliver a
           | good bang for the buck. Excellent devices for low-power NAS /
           | server. But a different form-factor than SBC.
        
       | sixdonuts wrote:
       | Good stuff - thanks for sharing. IaC and containers are great but
       | having the ability to run multiple VMs and create snapshots prior
       | to performing upgrades or security patches is still very helpful
       | from an operational perspective.
        
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       (page generated 2025-01-16 23:01 UTC)