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new Helios64 user - first impressions


succo

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ok, so my flaming new helios finally arrived (after Christmas, what a pity) and, after spending some time assembling it (it's not the easiest thing in the world, expecially if you want to attach the mainboard BEFORE connecting all the cables, as specified within the instructions) I started configuring it.

As i don't like the easy way (I'd have bought something else, if i would have) I went for a daily build with Groovy (i don't need OMV for my purpose and am quite accostumed to the ubuntu way), and the first thing i did was to make it a rolling release, putting devel in the place of groovy in sources.list, so that now i run hirsute (even if with a groovy userspace, as armbian has no hirsute userspace yet). Here comes a question... could it be possible to have a devel channel, replicating the 'latest' channel, so that once hirsute overcomes groovy i don't have to edit armbian.list to reflect the change?

OK, back to the testing... i come from many years with a dns-340l from d-link with fun_plug, not exactly the most user friendly situation and not exactly the top on the hardware side, so i can say i know how to make things work, so i migrated some config files, moved the disks and guess what? my shares came back to life in not more than a couple of hours, and now with a mariadb server (instead of an old mysql 4.something), and i can say i see the difference. I use kodi with a central db and (maybe the db server, maybe the ram, maybe who knows) everything is faster now... before every database read was a pity, now it's quite instantaneous. BTW, i had an usb-c to hdmi cable hanging around and it seems to be working (at least, after enabling the correct dtbo,, it shows the login on screen) so i tried to build kodi (i reached 80° C while building, is that normal? that's why i said 'flaming' in the start) and now have to try it as a service... i used to have an headless kodi installed on a rpi4 to update my library, but i guess i could have an instance running directly on the NAS, headless or not (i'd like to try how is kodi rendered on the helios)

Now, another question... until now I saw only the upper fan spin (and you can see i reached quite high temperatures), what could have gone wrong?

Anyway, the Helios64 is a real beast, it didn't freeze on me yet and is really over my expectations, thanks Helios team

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5 minutes ago, succo said:

as armbian has no hirsute userspace yet


We have it, it works, but we don't provide it for end users yet: https://github.com/armbian/build/blob/desktop/config/distributions/hirsute/name This development branch will be merged to main branch in about 2 weeks, which means one could easily build images without much extra efforts, but don't know when we will switch groovy for hirsute on nightly builds. Its (will be) a matter of adjusting files as such https://github.com/armbian/build/blob/desktop/config/targets-cli-beta.conf Not much work for that, but someone has to pay attention and do it. Can also be done automagically, but then someone would need to script it ...  

 

7 minutes ago, succo said:

could it be possible to have a devel channel, replicating the 'latest' channel, so that once hirsute overcomes groovy i don't have to edit armbian.list to reflect the change?

 

Anything is possible if expenses for R&D are covered. Also if we would do everything users asks on this forum, we would need to work strait for several years and then this idea of yours will get in front for realisation. I agree it is nice to have, but there are many nice to have ideas, some are even critical problems and has to wait for our life to catch up. It's up to you how bad you need this - if you help project with your know-how, resources, cash .... it can be done much faster.

 

Also we never support or dug into distribution upgrades. Too many things, that are outside our domain & control, can go wrong. We have no intention to fix more of Debian or Ubuntu bugs. Our focus is to keep devices as such, usable, alive, supported https://docs.armbian.com/#what-is-armbian and build-able from sources.

 

42 minutes ago, succo said:

so i tried to build kodi


Running Kodi on Linux is generally troublesome. With legacy kernels is just like with other RK3399 boards:

... but I would recommend you modern kernel. But here Kodi might not yet work OOB. IHMO NAS should do different job in 1st place ...

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On 12/30/2020 at 6:35 PM, Igor said:


Running Kodi on Linux is generally troublesome. With legacy kernels is just like with other RK3399 boards:

... but I would recommend you modern kernel. But here Kodi might not yet work OOB. IHMO NAS should do different job in 1st place ...

well, it worked perfectly, even if it lacks hardware acceleration (i tried a 1080p mkv and it was slow as hell, don't know the cpu level but it was completely unusable, but i guess sd stuff will play ok, and i really didn't need kodi to output anything, just to update the db)

i know NAS is not intended for this use, but if we can play music on a vacuum cleaner... :)

 

btw, the fan trouble was depending on a too tight screw, disassembled it and found the culprit

right now, webmin works for the remote administration part, apache works (even if i really don't need it yet), mariadb does its job, i put in 5 disks (for a total of 31T right now) and the helios runs stable, the only disappointment has been that i can't insert my FANTEC MR-25D Rack for 2 2,5 drives as the screw holes don't fit with the guides, so i can only fix the far screws and it doesn't stay straight enough to make contacts with the sata port, and iven if it would i couldn't access the 2,5 slots because ot the plastic guide in front of the slots

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@succo Thanks for the feedback and good to see you found the issue for the fan not spinning which clearly wasn't normal.

 

On 1/1/2021 at 1:53 AM, succo said:

the only disappointment has been that i can't insert my FANTEC MR-25D Rack for 2 2,5 drives

 

We didn't design the enclosure for such use case.

 

 

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