ARM architecture

Looking at some recent SBCs, they seem like they could make a pretty nice little NAS system, but the Rockstor docs list only 64-bit Intel/AMD x86 CPU as supported/required. It’d be great to see official support for ARM too.

Related issue on Github. Show support/interest for the feature to developers by liking this post or thumbs up on the linked github issue.

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@polarathene Just waking this up in case anyone missed it that wanted to weigh in on if this would be a popular target. We are still in the midst of backend overhaul but once we are ready again to roll another iso I’d be interested in the interest level for an ARM variant.

Won’t be for a while but with our openSUSE move pending, and it’s associated iso release; along with the fact that openSUSE have supported ARM for a very long time, and I think SUSE were the first enterprise linux to offer an ARM variant, I’m hoping we could squeeze in an initially ‘unofficial’ ARM image while we were at it. Haven’t any ARM gear myself but if there was sufficient interest then I would be happy to try and acquire some. Ideally we need to stick to ARM SBC’s that have ‘real’ sata, ie not via USB. My current favourite is the RockPro64 which can take a regular PCI card and the one they sell is based on the same chip as several I have here with some years on them with Rockstor without any issues: but that is with intel of course. Also they have a metal NAS orientated case (but only 2 disks unfortunately): NAS case. It may be that Rockstor would make for a welcome addition to that community. I see they already link to OpenMediaVault in their “Partner Projects” so that would bode well given we are in the same arena of self build NAS software.

Anyone please post if you have any interest in this area. I do have a tone of backlog but interested as always planning for the future.

I for one think that if the opensuse distros support it essentially out of the box, it would be great. I will eventually move on from my intel dn2800mt and the more choices the better. ie. whatever i find lying around the trash at work

I like it that with openSUSE you have more possibilities. Thank you for porting it!
I will be patient so that in time I can install Rockstor on this NAS Helios4.
So yes I have interest and appreciate your work.

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@polarathene, @Warbucks, @Eraser, @emc, @Hooverdan

@polarathene Thanks again for opening this forum thread. As per my recent closing of your associated GitHub issue the following doc entry:

is now inaccurate. :slight_smile: And so we need a new issue in our doc repo:

Because as from our Rockstor 3.9.2-60 “Build on openSUSE” variant only, we have been building and distributing AArm64 rpms in our testing channel. See:

And as from the release of our new “Rockstor 4 Installer Recipe” GitHub repo a few days ago:

We now have instructions for how to create your own “Rockstor 4 built on openSUSE”, based on Leap 15.2, installer. Where our first AArm64 profile within that installer is for the Raspberry Pi 4. If you have the knowledge and talent/interest please consider contributing other AArm64 profiles to that repository. Assuming you have the means to test the resulting installer of course. No promises we can distribute the resulting installer but it can only help others develop other profiles and allows those who follow in your footsteps to be able to sample and test Rockstor 4 on their preferred platform.

We are also hoping soon to be able to announce an official Ten64 profile, another AArm64 platfor. Which would then make our official list of Profiles:

  • Leap15.2.x86_64
  • Leap15.2.RaspberryPi4
  • Leap15.2.Ten64 (soon hopefully)

@emc I’m afraid your hopes for the Helios4 are not met by this development as it is not AArm64 but ARMv7 32-bit which is very unlikely to be a workable target platform for us. Sorry about that but btrfs, our core filesystem, is I think, best run on 64 bit machines and up. And with the prevalence of AArm64 bit machines emerging I hope, in time, with community input, that we can cover the majority of the more favoured AArm64 devices. This does not mean we undertake to distribute or test the resulting installers but we are happy to have them added as target profiles within the above installer Recipe if they have been tested by the submitter and hopefully also reviewed by others as working.

Please also see the following relevant forum thread re the new DIY installer:

Hope that helps, and please report your AArm64 findings re the new rockstor-installer GitHub repository and, as always, pull requests of fixes are welcome for any issues you may find.

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I was on the point of giving up with Rockstor as I only have ARM devices, but after finding this I see there is hope :grinning: Can anyone tell me if there is an ISO available I can try on my tiny arm box? I searched and could not find a link to any downloads. Thanks

@aquada There is no release image yet, but the forthcoming v4 (built on OpenSUSE) which is still in RC phase compiles to both x64 and Pi4. There are comprehensive instructions on here to build the installer - I’ve done this for both architectures successfully. Here’s the post for my Pi4 build:

Rockstor v3 does not have any ARM release.

Geoff

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thanks, I’ll give it a go :+1:

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This is exactly what I was hoping to see… I was hopeful that if I could get Rockstor working an a RaspberryPi4, my next step would be to purchase a Rockpro64. I really want a PCIe slot (already have an 8-port SATA card for it), but since I already have a few Pi4s, I thought I’d try one of those first.

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Hi guys, how’s it going?

Sorry for digging this up, I was looking around for Rockstor support for ARM and came across this topic, which actually seems to be quite on the spot with my next DIY project!

I’ve been looking at this SBC RockPi 4 with PCIe and a SATA Hat they call “Penta SATA Hat” with support for up to 5 drives and PCIe, seems like a great combo for a storage solution to last quite a few years. I was wondering if anyone has tried this hardware and is able to provide any feedback. Cheers

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Not seen that before @maverick - it looks interesting! I’ve only done ARM Rockstor v4 on Raspberry Pi 4 - and with success, so cannot comment re the RockPi unfortunately. That does look extremely tempting :slight_smile:

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Hi @GeoffA thank you for your feedback.
In the meanwhile I got in touch with the RockPI developers and they mentioned new improved models of RockPI 4 are coming out soon (they said they’ll be called A+ B+ and C+) I’m looking forward for the A+ model to come out, when it does I’ll probably dive into that, I think it will be interesting.

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