My Odroid died over the weekend. It's been running every day for 4 years so, I guess it did OK doing what it wasn't really meant to do.
So I'll use something else not meant to do it again :D
This time a Raspberry Pi 4. USB 3 and gigabit ethernet.
https://magpi.raspberrypi.org/articles/raspberry-pi-4-specs-benchmarks
Using the Pi's Wifi:
beomagi@BeoBalthazar ~ 2020-05-19 21:46:24
└─ $ ∙ iperf -c 192.168.1.42
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 192.168.1.42, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 512 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[ 3] local 192.168.1.109 port 61000 connected with 192.168.1.42 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 3] 0.0-10.0 sec 91.2 MBytes 76.5 Mbits/sec
beomagi@BeoBalthazar ~ 2020-05-19 21:46:45
└─ $ ∙ iperf -c 192.168.1.42
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 192.168.1.42, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 512 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[ 3] local 192.168.1.109 port 61509 connected with 192.168.1.42 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 3] 0.0-10.0 sec 99.5 MBytes 83.4 Mbits/sec
2 runs showing this will generally be ~80 Mbps, so I can expect about 10 megabytes per second. It's not great, though it will handle HD videos (ish).
Benchmarking the wireless has not been great - so I'll have to hook it up to my router via gigabit ethernet.
Using the Pi's ethernet to my router, then over AC wifi:
Hooked up to my AC router, via gigabit ethernet, my PC over AC is getting much better bandwidth.
Using the Pi's ethernet to my router, then over AC wifi:
beomagi@BeoBalthazar ~ 2020-05-19 22:07:18
└─ $ ∙ iperf -c 192.168.1.42
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 192.168.1.42, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 512 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[ 3] local 192.168.1.109 port 49435 connected with 192.168.1.42 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 3] 0.0-10.0 sec 468 MBytes 392 Mbits/sec
beomagi@BeoBalthazar ~ 2020-05-20 12:57:16
└─ $ ∙ iperf -c 192.168.1.42
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 192.168.1.42, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 512 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[ 3] local 192.168.1.109 port 49454 connected with 192.168.1.42 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 3] 0.0-10.0 sec 483 MBytes 405 Mbits/sec
My HTPC is directly connected to the same router via cable, so pure wired numbers look excellent.
Downloading files are near 50MB/s so this is quite nice.
Using the Pi's purely over gigabit ethernet:
beomagi@beo-htpc ~ 2020-05-20 13:11:17
└─ $ ∙ iperf -c 192.168.1.42
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 192.168.1.42, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 604 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[ 3] local 192.168.1.108 port 54694 connected with 192.168.1.42 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 3] 0.0-10.0 sec 1.10 GBytes 943 Mbits/sec
beomagi@beo-htpc ~ 2020-05-20 13:17:44
└─ $ ∙ iperf -c 192.168.1.42
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 192.168.1.42, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 408 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[ 3] local 192.168.1.108 port 54706 connected with 192.168.1.42 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 3] 0.0-10.0 sec 1.09 GBytes 940 Mbits/sec
Now we're talking. This should be good for ~115MBps
Bottleneck - harddrive:
pi@raspberrypi:~/shares/major $ dd if=/dev/zero of=./testfile bs=1000M count=1 oflag=direct
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
1048576000 bytes (1.0 GB, 1000 MiB) copied, 10.8304 s, 96.8 MB/s
pi@raspberrypi:~/shares/major $ dd if=./testfile of=/dev/null bs=1000M count=1
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
1048576000 bytes (1.0 GB, 1000 MiB) copied, 8.92268 s, 118 MB/s
These are directly on the pi, so they give a decent indication of that USB 3 capability with harddrive storage. It's not far off from the gigabit throughput so it's well matched. The numbers are actually slightly better than the odroid, which is excellent.
Previous NAS setup:
https://beomagi.blogspot.com/2016/09/odroid-xu4-my-new-nas.html
Showing posts with label linux. Show all posts
Showing posts with label linux. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 20, 2020
Sunday, July 2, 2017
Chromebook II - a linux laptop
My previous foray into chromebooks
Edit 2019-04-06:
Crouton install has changed a little because of changes in ChromeOS security.
So it was about time again to get a new laptop. While I did have a recent windows laptop, my wife needed it more than I did, so $500 later, I was the owner of the fairly recent Asus c302 Chromebook.
This Chromebook is one of the nicest laptops I've ever owned. The all aluminum smooth lines make "it looks like a mac" comments common. The keyboard is wonderful to work on. The screen is above average brightness, full HD and touch capable, decent CPU etc.
Specs:
The CPU is fairly powerful while sipping current (4.5W "TDP"). Not much different from the MacBook 12". 4GB of RAM is an upgrade compared to my previous 2GB RAM Chromebook. I really wish I could get 8 or 16GB but the laptop is proving itself capable even at 4, so no real complaints there. The onboard SSD works at a decent clip, and 64GB is plenty for a Chromebook's standard kit plus some Android apps, and Linux installs. While it does have 2 USB-C ports, I do wish they included the old USB-A 3.0 receptacle. The larger ports would have allowed tiny drives and micro-SD card adapters to fit nearly flush with the case. At the current time, there's nothing for USB-C that fits the bill as "low profile". It does have a regular micro-SD card slot though and I wasted no time dropping in a 128GB card for more storage.
Here's what $500 got me:
CPU : Core M3 6Y30 (0.9-2.2GHz dual core, hyperthreading)
RAM : 4GB
Storage : 64GB (emmc)
Screen : 12.5" 1920x1080, touch capable, folds for "tablet mode"
Battery : 6-8 hours moderate usage, 8ish hours of video playback,
several days of standby
Ports : 2 USB-C, a micro SD slot, audio/mic
Weight : 2.6 pounds
My previous Acer cb3 11" is going for $80 on ebay. It's incredible for the price, but sluggish with more than moderate use.
The CPU of the Acer 11" cb3 is a Celeron N2840 (baytrail). That CPU runs from 2.16-2.58GHz - and it's trounced by the lower clocked 0.9-2.2GHz core M3 (skylake). A prime example of how a better IPC ratio works.
My intention:
This Chromebook is among the first to be released with the intended purpose of running android applications. Initially the Google Play Store wasn't available. This was remedied by switching to the beta channel.
My intended purpose of this was to replace my old "supercheap" Acer Chromebook 11 cb3-111. It should be noted that the cb3-111 is trending on ebay at ~$80. This is dirt cheap and actually quite a decent laptop for casual work. This meant I'm really using ChromeOS as a stepping stone to the new Android application the Play Store can provide and the majority of usage is in a Linux chroot.
Setting up a Linux chroot is quite simple. going a step further and removing the write protect screw further helps by reducing a blaring warning screen that dangerously gives the option to overwrite your work by pressing space. That's really it.
Lets make crouton a little easier to manage...
Edit 2019-04-06:
Crouton install has changed a little because of changes in ChromeOS security.
- sudo install -Dt /usr/local/bin -m 755 ~/Downloads/crouton
- sudo crouton -r xenial -t xfce-desktop,audio,xorg,xiwi,keyboard,extension
This Chromebook is one of the nicest laptops I've ever owned. The all aluminum smooth lines make "it looks like a mac" comments common. The keyboard is wonderful to work on. The screen is above average brightness, full HD and touch capable, decent CPU etc.
Specs:
The CPU is fairly powerful while sipping current (4.5W "TDP"). Not much different from the MacBook 12". 4GB of RAM is an upgrade compared to my previous 2GB RAM Chromebook. I really wish I could get 8 or 16GB but the laptop is proving itself capable even at 4, so no real complaints there. The onboard SSD works at a decent clip, and 64GB is plenty for a Chromebook's standard kit plus some Android apps, and Linux installs. While it does have 2 USB-C ports, I do wish they included the old USB-A 3.0 receptacle. The larger ports would have allowed tiny drives and micro-SD card adapters to fit nearly flush with the case. At the current time, there's nothing for USB-C that fits the bill as "low profile". It does have a regular micro-SD card slot though and I wasted no time dropping in a 128GB card for more storage.
Here's what $500 got me:
CPU : Core M3 6Y30 (0.9-2.2GHz dual core, hyperthreading)
RAM : 4GB
Storage : 64GB (emmc)
Screen : 12.5" 1920x1080, touch capable, folds for "tablet mode"
Battery : 6-8 hours moderate usage, 8ish hours of video playback,
several days of standby
Ports : 2 USB-C, a micro SD slot, audio/mic
Weight : 2.6 pounds
My previous Acer cb3 11" is going for $80 on ebay. It's incredible for the price, but sluggish with more than moderate use.
The CPU of the Acer 11" cb3 is a Celeron N2840 (baytrail). That CPU runs from 2.16-2.58GHz - and it's trounced by the lower clocked 0.9-2.2GHz core M3 (skylake). A prime example of how a better IPC ratio works.
Pros and Cons of Chromebooks:
The Good:
- Chromebooks are cheap.
- Usually light and slim formfactor.
- Excellent battery life.
- Keyboard dumps lesser used keys, so even small keyboards have larger than average keys.
- The boot time is fantastically short - <10 seconds.
- Relatively decent specs for the price.
- Security - the OS is designed to protect the user from malicious code.
- Recovery - the OS is designed to reset to a new state.
- Backup - The OS is designed to load all user settings and apps from the cloud if wiped or new.
- The OS auto updates.
- NEW Chromebooks can run Android Apps.
- Can run Linux chroots.
- Linux chroot runs in parallel, no reboot needed.
- Chroot can be backed up, restored, updated in simple one line commands.
- Can manage chroots while still getting full use from ChromeOS.
The Bad:
- Need to get used to a slightly different kind of keyboard
- ChromeOS itself has a limited selection of offline applications
- Heavy reliance on Google accounts (all your info in one place isn't good)
- Setting up Chroots is mildly technical. The warning screen should be completely blockable but isn't unless you modify the bios.
The Ugly:
- ChromeOS update potentially can break a chroot install, requiring a chroot update to fix.
- Warning screen is annoying long, and pressing <SPACE> will powerwash the laptop.
- Warning screen cannot be eliminated, but reduced to 2 seconds and beep disabled. Required opening the laptop.
Given the bad and the ugly, this is still something I really want.
once the laptop is opened and warning screen mostly neutered, it's mostly fine. One line backup/restore also mitigates that problem. Stopping the update system when entering linux also prevents updates from breaking a chroot unless you specifically let your laptop update.
My intention:
This Chromebook is among the first to be released with the intended purpose of running android applications. Initially the Google Play Store wasn't available. This was remedied by switching to the beta channel.
My intended purpose of this was to replace my old "supercheap" Acer Chromebook 11 cb3-111. It should be noted that the cb3-111 is trending on ebay at ~$80. This is dirt cheap and actually quite a decent laptop for casual work. This meant I'm really using ChromeOS as a stepping stone to the new Android application the Play Store can provide and the majority of usage is in a Linux chroot.
Setting up a Linux chroot is quite simple. going a step further and removing the write protect screw further helps by reducing a blaring warning screen that dangerously gives the option to overwrite your work by pressing space. That's really it.
- put device in developer mode
- download crouton and run to install Linux chroot
- open laptop and remove write protect screw
- run command to shorten warning screen to minimum and stop beep
- put screw back and close laptop
That's the plan.
Get Android and Linux on there:
The first thing I did when I got this was just test out the basic functionality. browse the web a little, pull up the system information, run a benchmark or two. Then I put the device on the beta channel and the playstore installed. I didn't see any problems running the beta channel, so I left it. I actually don't seem to be using Android apps much really anyway, so maybe I'll switch to stable later on.
Next I wanted this to run Linux. Here's the steps:
- Enable developer mode (ESC + F3 + Power), ctrl+D on start up. I didn't enable debugger features.
- Download crouton https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton
- Open crosh (ctrl+alt+t), type "shell" for bash
- cd ~/Downloads
- sudo sh crouton -r xenial -t xfce,xorg,xiwi,extension
Cleaner Linux Setup:
That's it. I now have Linux installed. Doing this means booting the laptop is met with a looooong beep on startup and 60 second warning screen saying "OS verification is disabled, press space to re-enable" which will powerwash the Chromebook and undo all of this. To get around it I opened the laptop and removed the write protect screw.
Do yourself a favor and use a GOOD screwdriver to handle the screws. Cheap metal tips can strip the screw head - and then you're screwed. You need a fine T5 torx tip to get at them too.
The write protect screw is under a padded flap (circled in the image above). Unscrew and remove for now.
Just as two years before, the following commands are run to reduce the delay and disable the beep:
sudo /usr/share/vboot/bin/set_gbb_flags.sh 0x1
sudo /usr/share/vboot/bin/set_gbb_flags.sh 0x8
sudo /usr/share/vboot/bin/set_gbb_flags.sh 0x8
I should note that after this the delay was still there. I had to enter these in crosh again to get it working. Not sure what happened there.
in order to develop stuff for servers, if you want to host anything:
in crouton, install IP tables:
in crouton, install IP tables:
sudo apt-get install iptables
vi /etc/rc.local
add:
/sbin/iptables -P INPUT ACCEPT
Linux gaming lives! just install libraries for i386 as a lot of game binaries are still 32bit, not 64.
libraries for games:
sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install libjson0:i386
sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install libjson0:i386
sudo apt-get install libopenal1:i386
sudo apt-get install libgl1-mesa-glx:i386
sudo apt-get install openssl:i386
sudo apt-get install lib32z1
sudo apt-get install libgtk2.0-0:i386 libidn11:i386 libglu1-mesa:i386 libxmu6:i386
sudo apt-get install libpangox-1.0-0:i386 libpangoxft-1.0-0:i386
sudo apt-get install lib32z1
sudo apt-get install libgtk2.0-0:i386 libidn11:i386 libglu1-mesa:i386 libxmu6:i386
sudo apt-get install libpangox-1.0-0:i386 libpangoxft-1.0-0:i386
sudo apt autoremove
Lets make crouton a little easier to manage...
Create the following files in /usr/local/bin:
linux-backup:
sudo edit-chroot -b -c /mnt/stateful_partition/chroots xenial
linux-backup:
sudo edit-chroot -b -c /mnt/stateful_partition/chroots xenial
linux-restore:
sudo sh ~/Downloads/crouton -f -$1
linux-update:
sudo sh ~/Downloads/crouton -u -n xenial
linux-xiwi:
sudo /sbin/initctl stop update-engine
sudo startxfce4 -X xiwi
Linux-xorg:
sudo /sbin/initctl stop update-engine
sudo startxfce4 -X xorg
This simplifies your management of the setup chroot. Just type "linux-update" to update the chroot. Or "linux-restore [archive]" to restore from an archive.
I've added stopping the ChromeOS updater as well to whenever the chroot is started. The reason for this is sometimes an update can stop the chroot from starting. This prevents that from happening unexpectedly. Automatic updates are awesome, but I much prefer control over it when it can break something. If I'm traveling for example, and happen to get wifi access momentarily, I wouldn't want an update pushed preventing me from using Linux for the rest of the trip.
Last thing - within the chroot, make a script:
remountSD:
sudo mount -o remount,exec /var/host/media/removable/SD\ card
Normally removable media is mounted with noexec, so you can't execute binaries and scripts. Running this will remount it so you can. In this case, the label of my microSD was "SD card" so adjust that line to suit your needs.
Monday, September 26, 2016
Odroid XU4 - My new NAS
Few thoughts on ARM:
ARM has been kicking ass and taking names for several years now. It's no surprise that other companies would want to acquire it - Japanese company SoftBank finished it's acquisition of ARM a couple days ago, at an astonishing $32 Billion.
ARM doesn't make anything physically - but they do create CPU designs and license them. ARM based processors are found everywhere today - in cameras, routers, smart TV, cellphones, game consoles, laptops, even servers.
For ARM based servers, the goal is energy efficiency where raw performance is secondary. Rarely would one look at arm over the standard x86 and consider it for a performance advantage. Even newer Atom processors (though the line is effectively dead *supposedly?*) is generally more powerful.
There are many use cases where processing power isn't quite necessary though. When I/O is the bottleneck, or where we need reliability, or need to keep a server running with little power, the importance of fast processors is far less. In multiprocessing environments, where a few heavy CPU bound processes can stymie a fast processor with low core count, a slower processor with high core count can still stay operational, letting a user do whatever else they may need to do.
On the Odroid-xu4:
A good use case would be a webserver, file storage or network cache system (memcached, cachewho [my own thing...]), home automation server. For my own purchase of an Odroid-xu4, I am using it as a NAS, with minor web/development jobs.
Here's the specs on the little bugger:
CPU : Samsung Exynos 5422 (2GHz Cortex A15 x4 + 1.3GHz Cortex A7 x4)
RAM : 2GB LPDDR3, 933MHz (16bit interface, 14.9 GBps bandwidth)
GPU : Mali-T628
Video : HDMI (standard type-A), 1080p capable
Audio : HDMI, i2s (no audio jack)
USB3.0 : 2 ports
USB2.0 : 1 port
Storage : EMMC, Micro-SD
Network : RJ-45, Gigabit Ethernet
GPIO : 30pin + 12pin section (i2s, i2c, spi, ADC etc.)
Possible uses:
HTPC - video out via HDMI means this is a compact way to create an HTPC system. various operating systems are supported - several Linux distributions, and even Android.
NAS - Standard Linux isn't too hard to turn into a NAS, but there's also dedicated storage distros like Open Media Vault.
Web Server - Python, Ruby, Apache, Nginx, PHP, Node - loads of ways to get a web app running here.
Media Streaming - Plex can turn this into a media streaming server.
Home Automation - Much in the same manner as a Raspberry PI can be used. This is probably a little less optimal, since the extra power over a Raspberry PI isn't really needed.
Robotics - GPIO pins can communicate with servo boards and arduinos and other devices giving control over mechanical parts, input for sensors, and the device of course packs a lot of processing capability.
The advantages of this over an x86 device:
Cost - $80 + SD card ($10?). x86 devices are quite cheap if you go with Atom, though not quite at this level. If you do find one, it's usually not a complete system, or lacks USB 3.0/gigabit ethernet.
Noise - very quiet fan, optional no noise case. Not really much of an advantage over Atom which doesn't need a fan in many cases either.
Size - while there ARE Intel Stick PC devices, they are lacking some connectivity - often USB3.0 and/or Gigabit Ethernet. The combination of these is necessary for a decent NAS, or any server where you want fast transfers. Looking at devices that offer USB3.0/Gigabit Ethernet means lots more money.
NB: recent SolidRun board can give this a run for its money, though it's more expensive, with some options at several times the price.
http://techreport.com/news/30699/solidrun-microsom-offers-braswell-cpus-on-a-tiny-package
Why Odroid-xu4? Why not a Raspberry PI which has more community support?
I'm making a huge deal about Gigabit Ethernet and USB3.0 over the usual USB2.0 and 10/100Mbps Ethernet, because it's quite relevant to current media types.
A Raspberry Pi 3 is a powerful device for it's size and cost being the same credit-card size as the XU4 with a retail value of $40. It has a solid quad core CPU, but USB2.0 and 100Mbps Ethernet. It's certainly usable for a storage server, but reading from a disk would be limited to the slowest speed in the chain - 12.5MBps. That's mind numbingly slow when you're syncing a terabyte or six.
For perspective, lets consider how different bandwidths handle 1 TB of data:
┌─────────────────┬────────────────────┬───────────┐
│ Interface │ Bandwidth │ Time/TB │
│"Fast" Ethernet │ 12.5MB per second │ 0.97 days │
│USB2.0 │ 60MB per second │ 4hr 51.3m │
│Gigabit Ethernet │ 125MB per second │ 2hr 20m │
│USB3.0 │ 625MB per second │ 28m │
└─────────────────┴────────────────────┴───────────┘
While you won't always need to sync terabytes of information, you will be concerned with hundreds of gigabytes. Easily happens when you're getting back from holiday and took a lot of RAW images and uncompressed video. Of course you cannot expect these speeds - the harddrive itself has a limit. Of course when you're syncing from one external drive to another external drive (as is my plan) you're looking at half the bandwidth in the best case - the same bus handles reading from one drive and writing to the other. So that seemingly acceptable 12.5MBps drops to just over 6MBps - and we're assuming maximum theoretical speeds. With the USB3.0 speeds, I can comfortably sync one drive to another and not take much of a hit - I'd most likely bottleneck near the maximum write speed of my drive.
To NTFS or not to NTFS....
Assuming I use the Odroid-xu4 for a LAN, what filesystem to use? NTFS is relatively limited compared to EXT4. The primary concern was the extra CPU utilization that NTFS would take over EXT4, however NTFS will be compatible with my other computers/laptop. My initial sync was over USB anyway directly connected to the windows machine that currently holds my library - so NTFS, purely for compatibility sake.
Setup:
I got the OpenMediaVault image from here.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/openmediavault/files/Odroid-XU3_XU4/
Win32diskimager can put the ISO on an SD card.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/
From there that's it. Put the card in the mini server and boot up. No need for a directly connected mouse and keyboard, just ssh into it, or use the web interface. For most things NAS related, the web interface will suffice.
So you can make users, shared on connected drives, mount/unmount the drives, make users, cronjobs etc.
I also came across this blog here http://obihoernchen.net/1235/odroid-xu4-with-openmediavault/
which was invaluable in configuring the NTFS drives for better performance:
Use on demand CPU governor -
in: /etc/default/openmediavault
add:
OMV_CPUFREQUTILS_GOVERNOR="ondemand"
run:
omv-mkconf cpufrequtils
update-rc.d cpufrequtils defaults
CPU governor tuning:
run:
apt-get install sysfsutils
in: /etc/sysfs.conf
add:
# cpu0 sets cpu[0-3], cpu4 sets cpu[4-7]
devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/ondemand/io_is_busy = 1
devices/system/cpu/cpu4/cpufreq/ondemand/io_is_busy = 1
devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/ondemand/sampling_down_factor = 10
devices/system/cpu/cpu4/cpufreq/ondemand/sampling_down_factor = 10
devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/ondemand/up_threshold = 80
devices/system/cpu/cpu4/cpufreq/ondemand/up_threshold = 80
run:
cpufreq-set -g ondemand -c 0
cpufreq-set -g ondemand -c 4
service sysfsutils start
NTFS mount options:
in: /etc/default/openmediavault
add:
OMV_FSTAB_MNTOPS_NTFS="defaults,nofail,noexec,noatime,big_writes"
I strongly suggest you read the original link at Obihörnchen's blog to understand what each command does.
Drive performance:
root@odroid:~/major# dd if=/dev/zero of=./testfile bs=1000M count=1 oflag=direct
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
1048576000 bytes (1.0 GB) copied, 12.7106 s, 82.5 MB/s
root@odroid:~/major# dd if=/dev/zero of=./testfile bs=1000M count=1 oflag=direct
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
1048576000 bytes (1.0 GB) copied, 12.6035 s, 83.2 MB/s
Benchmarks:
These benchmarks were taken using the on demand CPU governor configuration described. I've compared it against my laptop, and desktop.
Desktop: Core i5 2400 (Sandy Bridge), 16GB RAM
Laptop: Celeron N2940 (BayTrail-m), 8GB RAM
Odroid-XU4: Exynos 5422, 2GB RAM
It's interesting noting the specifications of these:
▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄
█ CPU █ Power? █ Cores █ Frequency █ intro █
█▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀█▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀█▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀█▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀█▀▀▀▀▀▀▀█
█ Core i5 2400 █ 95W TDP █ 4 █ 3.1-3.4 █ 2011 █
█ Celeron N2940 █ 7.5W/4.5W TDP/SDP █ 4 █ 1.83-2.25 █ 2014 █
█ Exynos 5422 █ 10W/14W max CPU/GPU █ 8 █ 2.0/1.3 █ 2015 █
▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀
While it may seem that the Exynos 5422 is a higher watt CPU, this was achieved from tests from the odroid forum. Typically the entire system hovers at a wattage my laptop's processor will only dream of. There's further tweaks that lower power too - such as down clocking the GPU to reduce power as a server even more. It should also be noted, the Thermal Design Power (TDP) and Scenario Design Power (SDP). The Intel-AMD war brought in marketing departments that spread BS over these numbers. TDP was the rating the silicone was designed to handle. SDP was a typical workload. Nothing really was equal in comparing AMD and Intel CPUs that stated these.
The power supply for the odroid system is 5 Volts, 4 Amps. That's 20 Watts. Consider that in several cases here, the GPU is also adding to power consumption: http://www.mikronauts.com/hardkernel/hardkernel-odroid-xu4-review/11/
Either way you compare the Baytrail Celeron against the Exynos 5422, the Core i5 is sorely out of place. The question is is the performance also that far out there, or do the lower powered processors give it a disadvantage in efficiency?
I ran each test a several times to get 3 close results, and kept the middle.
+---------------+------------+-----------------+------------+
| | Odroid-Xu4 | Baytrail Laptop | i5 Desktop |
+---------------+------------+-----------------+------------+
| Mencoder | 3148 | 2478 | 795 |
| p7zip (text) | 7.342 | 6.708 | 2.675 |
| p7zip (video) | 174 | 143 | 32 |
| ImageMagick | | | |
| Apache bench | | | |
+---------------+------------+-----------------+------------+
ARM has been kicking ass and taking names for several years now. It's no surprise that other companies would want to acquire it - Japanese company SoftBank finished it's acquisition of ARM a couple days ago, at an astonishing $32 Billion.
ARM doesn't make anything physically - but they do create CPU designs and license them. ARM based processors are found everywhere today - in cameras, routers, smart TV, cellphones, game consoles, laptops, even servers.
For ARM based servers, the goal is energy efficiency where raw performance is secondary. Rarely would one look at arm over the standard x86 and consider it for a performance advantage. Even newer Atom processors (though the line is effectively dead *supposedly?*) is generally more powerful.
There are many use cases where processing power isn't quite necessary though. When I/O is the bottleneck, or where we need reliability, or need to keep a server running with little power, the importance of fast processors is far less. In multiprocessing environments, where a few heavy CPU bound processes can stymie a fast processor with low core count, a slower processor with high core count can still stay operational, letting a user do whatever else they may need to do.
On the Odroid-xu4:
A good use case would be a webserver, file storage or network cache system (memcached, cachewho [my own thing...]), home automation server. For my own purchase of an Odroid-xu4, I am using it as a NAS, with minor web/development jobs.
Here's the specs on the little bugger:
CPU : Samsung Exynos 5422 (2GHz Cortex A15 x4 + 1.3GHz Cortex A7 x4)
RAM : 2GB LPDDR3, 933MHz (16bit interface, 14.9 GBps bandwidth)
GPU : Mali-T628
Video : HDMI (standard type-A), 1080p capable
Audio : HDMI, i2s (no audio jack)
USB3.0 : 2 ports
USB2.0 : 1 port
Storage : EMMC, Micro-SD
Network : RJ-45, Gigabit Ethernet
GPIO : 30pin + 12pin section (i2s, i2c, spi, ADC etc.)
HTPC - video out via HDMI means this is a compact way to create an HTPC system. various operating systems are supported - several Linux distributions, and even Android.
NAS - Standard Linux isn't too hard to turn into a NAS, but there's also dedicated storage distros like Open Media Vault.
Web Server - Python, Ruby, Apache, Nginx, PHP, Node - loads of ways to get a web app running here.
Media Streaming - Plex can turn this into a media streaming server.
Home Automation - Much in the same manner as a Raspberry PI can be used. This is probably a little less optimal, since the extra power over a Raspberry PI isn't really needed.
Robotics - GPIO pins can communicate with servo boards and arduinos and other devices giving control over mechanical parts, input for sensors, and the device of course packs a lot of processing capability.
The advantages of this over an x86 device:
Cost - $80 + SD card ($10?). x86 devices are quite cheap if you go with Atom, though not quite at this level. If you do find one, it's usually not a complete system, or lacks USB 3.0/gigabit ethernet.
Noise - very quiet fan, optional no noise case. Not really much of an advantage over Atom which doesn't need a fan in many cases either.
Size - while there ARE Intel Stick PC devices, they are lacking some connectivity - often USB3.0 and/or Gigabit Ethernet. The combination of these is necessary for a decent NAS, or any server where you want fast transfers. Looking at devices that offer USB3.0/Gigabit Ethernet means lots more money.
NB: recent SolidRun board can give this a run for its money, though it's more expensive, with some options at several times the price.
http://techreport.com/news/30699/solidrun-microsom-offers-braswell-cpus-on-a-tiny-package
Why Odroid-xu4? Why not a Raspberry PI which has more community support?
I'm making a huge deal about Gigabit Ethernet and USB3.0 over the usual USB2.0 and 10/100Mbps Ethernet, because it's quite relevant to current media types.
A Raspberry Pi 3 is a powerful device for it's size and cost being the same credit-card size as the XU4 with a retail value of $40. It has a solid quad core CPU, but USB2.0 and 100Mbps Ethernet. It's certainly usable for a storage server, but reading from a disk would be limited to the slowest speed in the chain - 12.5MBps. That's mind numbingly slow when you're syncing a terabyte or six.
For perspective, lets consider how different bandwidths handle 1 TB of data:
┌─────────────────┬────────────────────┬───────────┐
│ Interface │ Bandwidth │ Time/TB │
│"Fast" Ethernet │ 12.5MB per second │ 0.97 days │
│USB2.0 │ 60MB per second │ 4hr 51.3m │
│Gigabit Ethernet │ 125MB per second │ 2hr 20m │
│USB3.0 │ 625MB per second │ 28m │
└─────────────────┴────────────────────┴───────────┘
While you won't always need to sync terabytes of information, you will be concerned with hundreds of gigabytes. Easily happens when you're getting back from holiday and took a lot of RAW images and uncompressed video. Of course you cannot expect these speeds - the harddrive itself has a limit. Of course when you're syncing from one external drive to another external drive (as is my plan) you're looking at half the bandwidth in the best case - the same bus handles reading from one drive and writing to the other. So that seemingly acceptable 12.5MBps drops to just over 6MBps - and we're assuming maximum theoretical speeds. With the USB3.0 speeds, I can comfortably sync one drive to another and not take much of a hit - I'd most likely bottleneck near the maximum write speed of my drive.
To NTFS or not to NTFS....
Assuming I use the Odroid-xu4 for a LAN, what filesystem to use? NTFS is relatively limited compared to EXT4. The primary concern was the extra CPU utilization that NTFS would take over EXT4, however NTFS will be compatible with my other computers/laptop. My initial sync was over USB anyway directly connected to the windows machine that currently holds my library - so NTFS, purely for compatibility sake.
Setup:
I got the OpenMediaVault image from here.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/openmediavault/files/Odroid-XU3_XU4/
Win32diskimager can put the ISO on an SD card.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/
From there that's it. Put the card in the mini server and boot up. No need for a directly connected mouse and keyboard, just ssh into it, or use the web interface. For most things NAS related, the web interface will suffice.
So you can make users, shared on connected drives, mount/unmount the drives, make users, cronjobs etc.
I also came across this blog here http://obihoernchen.net/1235/odroid-xu4-with-openmediavault/
which was invaluable in configuring the NTFS drives for better performance:
Use on demand CPU governor -
in: /etc/default/openmediavault
add:
OMV_CPUFREQUTILS_GOVERNOR="ondemand"
run:
omv-mkconf cpufrequtils
update-rc.d cpufrequtils defaults
CPU governor tuning:
run:
apt-get install sysfsutils
in: /etc/sysfs.conf
add:
# cpu0 sets cpu[0-3], cpu4 sets cpu[4-7]
devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/ondemand/io_is_busy = 1
devices/system/cpu/cpu4/cpufreq/ondemand/io_is_busy = 1
devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/ondemand/sampling_down_factor = 10
devices/system/cpu/cpu4/cpufreq/ondemand/sampling_down_factor = 10
devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/ondemand/up_threshold = 80
devices/system/cpu/cpu4/cpufreq/ondemand/up_threshold = 80
run:
cpufreq-set -g ondemand -c 0
cpufreq-set -g ondemand -c 4
service sysfsutils start
NTFS mount options:
in: /etc/default/openmediavault
add:
OMV_FSTAB_MNTOPS_NTFS="defaults,nofail,noexec,noatime,big_writes"
I strongly suggest you read the original link at Obihörnchen's blog to understand what each command does.
Drive performance:
root@odroid:~/major# dd if=/dev/zero of=./testfile bs=1000M count=1 oflag=direct
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
1048576000 bytes (1.0 GB) copied, 12.7106 s, 82.5 MB/s
root@odroid:~/major# dd if=/dev/zero of=./testfile bs=1000M count=1 oflag=direct
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
1048576000 bytes (1.0 GB) copied, 12.6035 s, 83.2 MB/s
Getting over 80MBps write - that's much better than I was expecting.
root@odroid:~/major# dd if=./testfile of=/dev/null bs=1000M count=1
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
1048576000 bytes (1.0 GB) copied, 11.272 s, 93.0 MB/s
root@odroid:~/major# dd if=./testfile of=/dev/null bs=1000M count=1
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
1048576000 bytes (1.0 GB) copied, 11.313 s, 92.7 MB/s
Getting over 90MBps read - again a really decent result for a single disk.
My understanding is the drive I'm using (Western Digital RED 6TB should handle double that - 175MB/s read/write - and it's possible I might achieve that with EXT4 on this same platform. More testing is needed when I purchase another drive. For now, I'll enjoy the speeds that are near the maximum of the interface, and easily faster than my AC Wifi provides.
The drive I'm currently using will be accompanied by a few more later. This is achieved by using an external 4-bay harddrive enclosure.
The drive I'm currently using will be accompanied by a few more later. This is achieved by using an external 4-bay harddrive enclosure.
 |
| Next to the Odroid, this stack of drive bays looks huge. It isn't :D This is a Vantec HX4R. |
 |
| Bays lock in place with a clip. The enclosure supports SATA and USB3.0, and from the sticker you can also see RAID settings - 0, 1, 0+1, 5 JBOD - and in the way I use it, just as a hub for all drives. That top drive is a drive I removed all drive parts and interfaces from. It's just a shell - holding some screws for the other bays but makes for a good hidden storage unit. |
Benchmarks:
These benchmarks were taken using the on demand CPU governor configuration described. I've compared it against my laptop, and desktop.
Desktop: Core i5 2400 (Sandy Bridge), 16GB RAM
Laptop: Celeron N2940 (BayTrail-m), 8GB RAM
Odroid-XU4: Exynos 5422, 2GB RAM
It's interesting noting the specifications of these:
▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄
█ CPU █ Power? █ Cores █ Frequency █ intro █
█▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀█▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀█▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀█▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀█▀▀▀▀▀▀▀█
█ Core i5 2400 █ 95W TDP █ 4 █ 3.1-3.4 █ 2011 █
█ Celeron N2940 █ 7.5W/4.5W TDP/SDP █ 4 █ 1.83-2.25 █ 2014 █
█ Exynos 5422 █ 10W/14W max CPU/GPU █ 8 █ 2.0/1.3 █ 2015 █
▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀
While it may seem that the Exynos 5422 is a higher watt CPU, this was achieved from tests from the odroid forum. Typically the entire system hovers at a wattage my laptop's processor will only dream of. There's further tweaks that lower power too - such as down clocking the GPU to reduce power as a server even more. It should also be noted, the Thermal Design Power (TDP) and Scenario Design Power (SDP). The Intel-AMD war brought in marketing departments that spread BS over these numbers. TDP was the rating the silicone was designed to handle. SDP was a typical workload. Nothing really was equal in comparing AMD and Intel CPUs that stated these.
The power supply for the odroid system is 5 Volts, 4 Amps. That's 20 Watts. Consider that in several cases here, the GPU is also adding to power consumption: http://www.mikronauts.com/hardkernel/hardkernel-odroid-xu4-review/11/
Either way you compare the Baytrail Celeron against the Exynos 5422, the Core i5 is sorely out of place. The question is is the performance also that far out there, or do the lower powered processors give it a disadvantage in efficiency?
I ran each test a several times to get 3 close results, and kept the middle.
+---------------+------------+-----------------+------------+
| | Odroid-Xu4 | Baytrail Laptop | i5 Desktop |
+---------------+------------+-----------------+------------+
| Mencoder | 3148 | 2478 | 795 |
| p7zip (text) | 7.342 | 6.708 | 2.675 |
| p7zip (video) | 174 | 143 | 32 |
| ImageMagick | | | |
| Apache bench | | | |
+---------------+------------+-----------------+------------+
It's apparent that the i5 desktop is several times faster - but maybe it's not fast enough. This CPU power can jump over 70Watts when under heavy load. That puts it at least 10 times the power of the other CPUs. It's really interesting the see the large difference in 7zip on data that can't be compressed well (video) compared to data that compresses a lot (text). My laptop's CPU is never that far ahead of the Xu4 either. Expect laptops with ARM to gain in popularity (there's already Chromebooks and Android). Especially with the Atom line no longer available for that purpose.
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