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[183.08 --> 185.22] Pi compute module powered router. |
[186.16 --> 188.32] Ah, you're spending my money again, Alex. |
[188.34 --> 188.54] Yeah. |
[188.86 --> 190.46] It's easier when it's someone else's. |
[191.08 --> 196.34] Yeah. Well, this is perfect timing because we have a project to replace the router here |
[196.34 --> 201.06] at the studio and we want something that does WireGuard. I've decided after the last road trip |
[201.06 --> 208.82] that I wanted to divorce my VPN and server because guess what? My server was down and I couldn't |
[208.82 --> 213.28] VPN into troubleshoot. I want to put it on the router. I've wanted it that way for a long time, |
[213.40 --> 215.18] but I got a confession. |
[215.58 --> 218.74] Dear listener, Alex is nodding very, very strongly right now. |
[220.04 --> 226.40] I've been using the Comcast router that came with my Comcast business internet since they |
[226.40 --> 230.72] gave it to me. I just, it worked. Can we have a sad tuba sound effect, please, editor? |
[230.72 --> 239.52] I know. The only excuse really is truly just I didn't feel like Googling. That's barely an excuse. |
[239.88 --> 246.92] So this is obviously something that needs to be fixed. And you found this fantastic dual gigabit |
[246.92 --> 254.78] ethernet carrier board for the Raspberry Pi 4 compute module. It's a pretty small board, smaller than the |
[254.78 --> 260.20] original size of the Raspberry Pi, not quite, but around that size that you snap the compute module |
[260.20 --> 268.78] onto and you get USB ports, you get ethernet, you get HDMI. And I should make it clear, you get two |
[268.78 --> 273.04] ethernet, which wouldn't that be great? You know, you can have one interface connected to your LAN, |
[273.12 --> 277.70] you have one interface connected to your network, to your ISP or whatever it might be. And you know, |
[277.78 --> 280.14] you can build yourself a firewall. |
[280.14 --> 288.28] Are they both on the PCI bus? Because only one of them is like on the Raspberry Pi 4 at least is PCI, |
[288.34 --> 288.46] right? |
[289.90 --> 294.44] Sadly, I would say you have cut right to what the core issue is. |
[294.50 --> 295.34] Oh no. |
[296.28 --> 304.26] Interface 0 is on the PCI bus. So like that would be a great LAN interface, right? But interface 1 |
[304.26 --> 309.14] connects via USB, which is then connected to the PCI bus. And... |
[310.14 --> 318.24] This is also a challenge because stock OpenWrt does not have a driver for that. So you, if you install |
[318.24 --> 322.96] just regular old Linux or Raspberry Pi OS, you're good to go. I mean, it's like there's been a driver |
[322.96 --> 330.94] since like kernel 4. But OpenWrt has decided not to ship that. And a friend of the show, Jeff Gerling, |
[331.04 --> 336.26] you know, he posted a poll request saying, hey, how about adding this support for this? And it doesn't |
[336.26 --> 337.16] seem like it's going anywhere. |
[337.36 --> 337.54] Yeah. |
[339.28 --> 344.62] It was actually funny. Speaking of Jeff, I was doing some research on this very thing and I came across |
[344.62 --> 348.64] this whole GitHub thread that he had created on this very issue. And it was actually really useful |
[348.64 --> 355.08] to know, don't go with stock OpenWrt with this router board because of this issue. And if you look |
[355.08 --> 360.36] at the documentation from the folks over at, what is it? Seed Studios? Is that what it is? |
[360.36 --> 361.76] Yeah. Link in the show notes. |
[362.28 --> 371.76] Yeah. On their wiki, they link to their own build of OpenWrt, which has the driver. So if you get the |
[371.76 --> 377.70] image from them, you're pretty much good to go. But I'd like to back up and talk about why I wanted |
[377.70 --> 384.00] this because the compute module has interested me for a while because I think that the critical flaw |
[384.00 --> 392.14] in the Raspberry Pi 4 as a server for me was the SD card. Just sucks. It's fine for booting the |
[392.14 --> 398.54] random OS here and there, but you don't want to run your server on that. And you can get the compute |
[398.54 --> 408.20] module with a built-in eMMC, up to 32 gigs of eMMC. And that's pretty appealing. So I thought that would |
[408.20 --> 412.56] be the way to go, or, you know, maybe an external USB drive. But I really wanted to try the eMMC |
[412.56 --> 418.72] and see how that works. And I got this device pretty quickly. I was shocked because I've tried |
[418.72 --> 423.76] to get the compute module on its own in some cases, and I've seen prices as high as $130 right now. |
[424.40 --> 428.88] And I think this whole thing all in was like $80. Then depending on the price of the compute |
[428.88 --> 434.10] module, it goes up from there. So you get it, and it's really small. One thing I didn't like about it |
[434.10 --> 439.94] is they put the SD card on the bottom of the board, and it's right under the HDMI port. So when you're |
[439.94 --> 443.78] plugging in the HDMI port, you're thumbing the SD card, which is a trigger to eject. |
[444.48 --> 449.68] And it's really frustrating. And then the USB-C port's also in the same area. And so when you're |
[449.68 --> 453.76] like kind of using your thumb to brace on the board so you can pull the power out, |
[454.66 --> 460.40] well, guess what you're doing? You're ejecting the SD card. It's kind of annoying. So if you can |
[460.40 --> 463.58] avoid it, just don't use the SD card. I don't like the way they've designed that at all. |
[463.58 --> 472.44] But the tricky thing is flashing eMMC. I didn't really appreciate this. But if you want to flash |
[472.44 --> 479.46] the eMMC with an image, a pre-built image directly, you got to move some jumpers on this little board |
[479.46 --> 484.62] to put it in a specific kind of boot mode. So it shows up as an external storage on your OS. |
[484.84 --> 488.14] Then you got to install a driver, and you got to actually flash it that way. |
[488.14 --> 495.62] Well, I wasn't down for that. I said, no, thank you. Thanks anyways. And I went and got myself |
[495.62 --> 499.70] OpenSUSE at Tumbleweed, because I've been diving deep into Tumbleweed recently, |
[500.36 --> 507.24] downloaded their Arch 64 image, just their generic ISO, not a Raspberry Pi image, not an image file, |
[507.32 --> 513.78] but an ISO, which is also an image file, downloaded that to my machine, and I flashed it to a Samsung |
[513.78 --> 522.44] SSD, a USB-C SSD, the ISO image, plugged it into the USB port on this little board, |
[522.72 --> 529.66] booted it up like a regular old PC. It booted off the SSD, because there's no OS on the thing. |
[530.94 --> 535.38] I booted up the SUS installer, which was crazy-ass slow, like ridiculously stupid slow. |
[535.84 --> 540.18] They're taking every opportunity to check your packages, scan your hardware, double-check this. |
[540.18 --> 544.82] I mean, I'm not exaggerating when I say maybe it was nearly a 30-minute boot process, |
[545.32 --> 547.08] just to get to the installer. |
[547.12 --> 547.42] Oh my god. |
[548.02 --> 552.24] Yeah. But then you get a full graphical Yast installer and all that kind of stuff, |
[552.30 --> 554.78] which is, you know, that's nice. That's nice to see. |
[554.98 --> 555.66] 30 minutes. |
[556.82 --> 558.96] Yeah, and it took quite a while to install it, too. |
[560.08 --> 564.76] I noticed on the console that it was like checking repositories, |
[564.76 --> 568.68] and every single thing it was checking was 404ing on the console. |
[568.68 --> 571.80] But I could ping, right? |
[571.88 --> 575.10] Like, I had no problem getting out and routing to the internet. |
[575.28 --> 577.08] So I don't know what exactly was going on there, |
[577.12 --> 579.22] but it seemed to just really slow stuff down. |
[580.96 --> 586.00] But goodness, if my name isn't Chris, I'll tell you what. |
[587.18 --> 590.88] The SUSE installer just saw the EMMC like it was a hard drive. |
[592.12 --> 593.38] No big deal at all. |
[593.38 --> 598.02] It just auto, the whole auto partition, auto install the bootloader, it all worked. |
[598.08 --> 603.94] It just, it installed to the EMMC on this Raspberry Pi compute module as if it was an x86 PCI. |
[604.02 --> 607.38] Just booted off a thumb drive and was installing to the internal disk. |
[607.74 --> 609.32] It felt like a real computer. |
[609.52 --> 613.76] And then it rebooted, and sure enough, I'm in OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, and it's good to go. |
[613.96 --> 615.22] And it worked great. |
[615.22 --> 619.26] I did do a little bit of benchmarking on the old EMMC because I was curious. |
[620.20 --> 626.62] And, you know, I saw anywhere between 80 to 200 megabytes a second. |
[627.54 --> 629.52] I don't really think it's very high. |
[629.56 --> 632.26] I don't think it's very good performance in terms of, like, overall. |
[632.44 --> 634.76] Like, if you want this thing to be faster, it's not going to be that. |
[634.92 --> 636.60] But it's way better than the SD. |
[637.26 --> 640.66] That's the same kind of level of performance as a spinning hard drive. |
[640.66 --> 641.10] Yeah. |
[642.42 --> 644.04] Yeah, it kind of performs like a, yeah. |
[644.22 --> 647.38] Yeah, that's a good way to think of it, Alex, is it kind of performs like a spinning hard drive. |
[648.40 --> 650.64] Yeah, that's a no from me, dog. |
[651.28 --> 651.52] Yeah. |
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