Recently I switched from Libreelec and Raspberry Pi to using Libreelec on Odroid C2. In this blog I’ll share more information on the overall setup, configuration and installation.
Setup
Setup is centered around the soundbar. My soundbar is my AVR, supporting DTS and Atmos. Soundbar is connected to the TV via HDMI with ARC. This allows me to watch e.g. Amazon Prime, as well as watching movies from Kodi with sound served from the soundbar. Supporting CEC, my soundbar gets automatically powered on and off together with TV and all devices are controlled by one remote control.
Layout
The overall layout consists of three components: TV, soundbar, Odroid.
Kodi sends audio to the DTS / Atmos soundbar via HDMI and pass through.
The soundbar plays the sound and forwards the video to the TV.
TV and soundbar are connected using HDMI ARC.
TV remote control for soundbar volume and Kodi navigation.
Installation
The Odroid C2 comes with a SDCard slot and I reused the SD Card from Raspberry Pi. ODroid C2 can work with a eMMC card, but my SD Card reader in my laptop wasn’t able to recognize the card without errors.
I have a RAID5 consisting of three 10TB HDDs. This RAID5 has a total capacity of 20 TB.
I bought a new 10 TB HDD that I want to use to extend the RAID5: 4 HDDs with a total capacity of 30 TB. The file system on md0 is ext4. Currently, the RAID5 disks are sdc1, sdf1 and sde1. The additional disk is sdd1.
cat /proc/mdstat
The RAID5 is formatted with ext4 and available as md0.
mount
Steps
Prepare new disk
Add disk to RAID
Grow RAID
Extend ext4 files system.
Prepare new disk
First start with the preparation of the new disk. The disk is /dev/sdd and needs to have a partition. I use parted for this. First, create a label of type gpt.
parted -s -a optimal /dev/sdd mklabel gpt
Next is to create the partition using parted. This time, I am using the interface.
parted /dev/sdd
Add disk to RAID
The RAID is a software RAID on Linux, therefore mdadm is used to control the raid. To add a new disk, option –add is used and the raid and new disk are passed as parameters.
mdadm --add /dev/md0 /dev/sdd1
The result of the operation can be seen in mdstat.
cat /poc/mdstat
The new disk is added as a spare device. The (S) behind sdd1 means spare device. In case a device would fail, the spare device will take over automatically and a RAID rebuild will be triggered. This gives me less trouble in case a device fails, as I won’t have to do anything, but it won’t give me more space. The RAID5 is still at 20 TB.
Grow RAID
To make the RAID5 aware of the new disk and that it should be used for data storage, the RAID must be informed to use the new HDD using the grow command.
mdadm --grow --raid-devices=4 /dev/md0
The command informs the RAID that there are now 4 HDDs to be used, instead of 3. This command will trigger a RAID rebuild, as the information must be distributed to the HDDs.
The RAID5 consists now of 4 HDD, all working [UUUU]. The size of the RAID is still 20 TB. This is because the md0 has capacity of 30 TB, but the ext4 filesystem is still configured to make use of 20 TB.
Resize ext4 filesystem
To be able to use the 30TB available on the RAID5, you need to resize the file system. First, run an integrity check.
e2fsck -f /dev/md0
After the e2fsck ended without errors, the file system can be extended. This is done by using the tool resize2fs.
resize2fs /dev/md0
After resize2fs completes (can take a while), the size available is now 30TB:
Running a server allows you to do a lot of stuff from remote. Copying files is one of those tasks you can do from anywhere on the world while being logged on via SSH. For this task it is good to know the speed of read/write to get an idea if it’s working s expected. When sitting in front of your computer, you can see if a HDD is working, in Windows you see a MB/s indication, and in Linux? Not all copy commands show you the transfer rate by standard. Some disk intensive tasks won’t at all (RAID sync).
To monitor disk activities in Linux, several tools are available. One is iostat.
Installation
To install iostat in Debian, you must install the package sysstat
apt-get install sysstat
Execute
To run iostat, just enter iostat in the shell.
iostat
The output will list the captured read / write speed of the available devices. To get a continuous output of the disk activites, run iostat -y 1. This will update the output every second until you end the program.
iostat -y 1
Several options are available to control the output. To get the disk read / write in Mb and not in kB, add the -m flag
iostat -y 1 -m
Using iostat you can see the throughput oft he disks, even when you are running “hidden” tasks like a RAID sync or copy process in another session (screen).
When you add a new HDD to an existing RAID, a sync is started. In my case I added a 10TB disk to a RAID5. The sync started and as estimated time I got something in the range of days. The estimated time is listed in finish=5384 min.
This number goes up and down a little bit, but overall result is that the sync will need days. After checking the status again after a while, it still showed days: finish=3437min.
The main problem here Is the rate at which mdadm can sync the data. The value is between 30000K and 43000K. That’s not much given the size of the RAID. There are several tips available on the internet. What help me was to set the stripe_cache_size.
STRIPE_CACHE_SIZE
You set the size of stripe_cache_size for each RAID device (mdX). In case your RAID is md0:
echo 32768 > /sys/block/md0/md/stripe_cache_size
Result
The speed increased to 100000K/sec. That’s close to 3x faster than before. Time went down drastically.
After setting up a DHCP server on a Raspberry Pi running Linux I get working leases for my clients. However, these are not static. It can happen that my smartphone gets a new IP address the next it connects: 192.168.0.161 instead of 192.168.0.160. For some clients I want to make sure they always use the same IP. This can achieved with ISC DHCP Server by registering a static lease for a specific MAC.
Example
I’ll use my soundbar for the rest of this blog as an example. The MAC of the network card is bc:30:d9:2a:c9:50. I want to always assign the IP 192.168.0.152 to the soundbar.
Find out client data
To find out the client data like MAC and current lease, check the DHCP server log. Or take a look at the back of the device or its settings to find out the MAC. For the DHCP server log on assigned leases:
sudo systemctl status isc-dhcp-server.service
The last line shows that the DHCP server assigned an IP to a client and shows also the MAC address.
DHCPACK on 192.168.0.152 to bc:30:d9:2a:c9:50
Let’s make sure the MAC bc:30:d9:2a:c9:50 always gets the IP 192.168.0.152.
Configuration
sudo vim /etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf
This is the DHCP server configuration file. I already configured it for a subnet 192.168.0.x where the server is assigning leases for the IP addresses in the range of 192.168.0.150 to 192.168.0.240.
Inside the subnet configuration, I have to add a configuration for the soundbar for IP 192.168.0.152.
To activate the new configuration, make either DHCPD load the new configuration from file, or restart the service.
sudo systemctl restart isc-dhcp-server.service
Check the status of the service.
sudo systemctl status isc-dhcp-server.service
Result
The assigned leases can be found in the dhcpd.leases file. All leases assigned are listed here, including the mac address, IP address, start and end time of the lease. If all works out as planned, the soundbar will be in there with the static IP.
My internet provider is Unitymedia. Their default router comes with a DHCP server. Honestly, it’s one of the worst products I ever had to work with. My private network is 192.168.0.x. The DHCP server of the Unitymedia box is distributing from time to time leases for 192.168.192.x. Changing my private network to 192.168.192.x one is not working, as then the DHCP server picks another address range. Advise from Unitymedia help desk was to reboot the box, which, of course, won’t solve the problem. Because of this error, some of my devices are in a different network: Chromecast won’t work, broken internet connection on smartphones, etc.
I do have a Raspberry Pi (RP) in 24/7 use. My idea is to run my own DHCP server on the RP. This not only solves the DHCP problem, but also gives me more control over the DHCP configuration.
This installs ISC DHCP server. As you can see in the output, starting the DHCP server failed.
sudo systemctl status isc-dhcp-server.service
The error is simply caused because the DHCP server is not configured. Let’s change that.
Configuration
Several parameters must be activated and configured.
sudo vim /etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf
Lease time
default-lease-time 600;
max-lease-time 7200;
Activate DHCP server
# If this DHCP server is the official DHCP server for the local
# network, the authoritative directive should be uncommented.
authoritative;
Subnet
This configures what IP address are going to be distributed. My private network is 192.168.0.x with the router on 192.168.0.1. As DNS you can use whatever you want, as an example I am using Google DNS servers.
This will give DHCP clients an IP address between .150 and .240, with router .1, Google DNS and sets the domain name to my own.
Deactivate old DHCP server
To not have the DHCP server provided by Unitymedia box still issuing wrong IP address, I am going to deactivate the service via the web interface.
Start DHCP server
After installing and configuring the new DHCP server on RP and deactivating the one from the router box, it’s time to start the new DHCP server.
Result
To see if a IP address is assigned, use this command:
sudo systemctl status isc-dhcp-server.service
Android
Putting my Android device into flight mode and back makes it connect to Wifi again and obtain a new IP address via DHCP. In the DHCP status log, I can see the DHCPDISCOVER from the Android device and that it got the IP address 192.168.0.150 assigned.
Mac
As my Mac always got the wrong IP assigned, I changed it to manual configuration. Change the mode to DHCP, apply and deactivate / activating Wifi.
Soundbar
And my soundbar that got a strange IP address assigned by the Unitymedia router box? Works too!
Chromcast streaming shows the SoundBar is now in the same network.
Recently I had the problem that running apt-get update stalled while trying to connect to an IPv6 address. For instance, on a Raspberry Pi, the update process stalls while trying to connect to archive.raspberrypi.org. All other connections worked fine. Looking at the console output, a difference was that apt was trying to connect to an IPv6 address.
The problem was caused by:
100% [Connecting to archive.raspberrypi.org (2a00:1098:0:80:1000:13:0:8)]
A quick internet search showed that you can force apt to not use IPv6 and only IPv4. As the download worked for IPv4, this seems like a reasonable workaround.
Solution
You can pass a parameter to disable IPv4 to apt-get, or write it to apt config file to make it persistent.
Configuration file
Create a new configuration file. This makes it easy for you to keep the change during updates and to know that you configured this.
sudo vim /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/99disable-ipv6
Insert Acquire::ForceIPv4 "true";
Save
apt-get update
Parameter
To disable IPv6 just once while calling apt, the parameter is Acquire::ForceIPv4=true.
sudo apt-get -o Acquire::ForceIPv4=true update
Result
Loading the package data from archive raspberrypi.org is now ignored and apt-get update works again.
I got a new 10 TB disk. Before I’ll add this one to a RAID, I want to play around with it, aka: test the drive. Therefore, I’ll need to format the drive to mount it. And before that, I need to create a partition.
FDISK
In the good old days, you used fdisk to partition a HDD. Since a few years, fdisk was replaced by parted as fdisk got some issues with large. Nevertheless, it still works.
Make sure to create a GPT partition table (g), and not the old new partition (n) alternative. Creating a new partition using “n” gives you a 2 TB partition.
Creating a new disklabel of type GPT using “g” gives you 10TB. The create the GPT disklabel and the new partition, use: g & n.
PARTED
An alternative to fdisk is parted. Parted is newer than fdisk and there are GUIs available to make it easier to end users to use it. Parted allows to pass parameters to it and do all the partition and sizing stuff in one command.
parted -s -a optimal /dev/sde mkpart primary ext4 0% 100%
Create Filesystem
Finally, after the HDD is partitioned, it’s time to format the partition with EXT4. Of course you can use a different filesystem.
Issuing an AJAX request is more complex than you might think.
Issue
When you issue an AJAX request to a server in another domain (CORS), you may get the following error message:
Response for preflight does not have HTTP ok status.
Problem
The server is configured to allow CORS. The Apache configuration includes
Header set Access-Control-Allow-Origin "*"
The response header of the service contains the correct header value. With this set you can access the service via CORS.
Solution
Now, why does it not work?
You have to be aware that this works for simple CORS requests. For more complex requests that set custom headers, etc, the service may not work. This is due to the preflight mechanism of the browser that checks if the service accepts the request. Before issuing an AJAX request (e.g. GET or POST), an OPTIONS is triggered to check what the service is accepting. You can see this in the network tab of Chrome.
The request includes two headers:
Access-Control-Request-Headers
Access-Control-Request-Method
Before issuing the actual GET request, the browser is checking if the service is correctly configured for CORS. This is done by checking if the service accepts the methods and headers going to be used by the actual request. Therefore, it is not enough to allow the service to be accessed from a different origin, but also the additional requisites must be fulfilled.
Solution
To configure Apache to set the headers, add the missing headers. Include in your HTTP service configuration the header set directive.
Header always set Access-Control-Allow-Origin "*"
Header always set Access-Control-Allow-Methods "POST, GET, OPTIONS, DELETE, PUT"
Header always set Access-Control-Allow-Headers "append,delete,entries,foreach,get,has,keys,set,values,Authorization"
Still not working!
After setting the values, you may still not able to call the service, as the browser still reports an error. The response code is not 2xx. Returning a 200 HTTP code can be enforced in Apache config using a rewrite rule.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} OPTIONS
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1 [R=200,L]
With this configuration, the service will now work with CORS. The first OPTIONS request will pass:
The example used in this blog is a CIFS share from a Samba server running on a Raspberry Pi mounted on demand by a client running Debian.
Goal
The goal is to have a share on a client that is dynamically mounted. The share should only be mounted when an app needs to access.
In my case I do have a server with a data storage share connected. The storage is made available to clients in the network. To not have the share being mounted by the clients all the time, the share should be mounted only when real demand exists. For instance, an app needs to read data from the share. If the share is not needed by the client, it should not be mounted.
Process
To understand the scenario better, take a look at the picture below. The process can be separated into 4 steps.
Step 1: the client is configured, but the share is inactive.
Step 2: An app is accessing the share. This can be an app as simple as ls /mnt/share
Step 3: The client is connecting to the server and mounting the share to the local mount point /mnt/share. The data is now available to the app.
Step 4: The app is not using the data from the share any longer. After a timeout, the client disconnects the share.
The example is using for the server a Raspberry Pi with Raspbian and for the client a Debian based system (Proxmox). As share type, CIFS is used. On the client, Samba is running and configured to give access to a named user to the data storage.
Installation
Server
Install Samba and configure access for a named user. This is not part of this blog.
Client
Autofs is the package and tool taking of mounting shares automatically. Install it using apt-get.
apt-get update
apt-get install autofs
Configuration of autofs
Autofs needs to be configured. To make it easier, the packages comes with templates. I am going to use the autofs master template as my starting point. Take a look at the master template as it contains an explanation of what is needed.
cd /etc/auto.master
more /etc/auto.master
To add an auto mount share a new line must be added to the file. The format is: mount-point file options.
Before adding the line, you first must understand how the template and autofs works and what you want to achieve. First parameter is for the local mount point. The directory informed here is the parent. The actual shares mounted are created as sub-folders in that directory. For instance, if you choose /mnt/server and the remote share is data, the final mount point will be /mnt/server/data. I am going to mount the remote share to /mnt/server.
The seconds parameter is for the configuration file for that mount point. The third parameter specifies how autofs is treating the mount point. To unmount the share after 1 minute of inactivity, use option –timeout=60. The ghost option will create the subfolder even in case the server is not reachable.
Edit master template
Add a new configuration line for mounting the server share
The actual mount configuration for the share is specified in the file /etc/auto.server. Create file /etc/auto.server and edit it.
touch /etc/auto.server
vim /etc/auto.server
Insert mount options.
[username] – name of user used to connect to Samba share
[password] – password of the user
[remote_server] – IP / server name of the Samba server
/data – name of the share configured at Samba. In case you have a share configured named Music, or Fotos, or Work, substitute data with the correct share name.
data -fstype=cifs,username=[username],password=[password] ://[remote_server]/data
Save file
Change permission
chmod 0644 auto.server
Start autofs as service
Stop autofs and start it in debug mode to see if the configuration works.
If it worked, exit and start the service.
systemctl start autofs.service
Test
To test, go through the 4 steps described in the picture at the top of this blog.
Step 1
Client is ready. Check the mounted volumes. You will see that no CIFS volume is available.
Using mount, you can see that the mount point is available.
/etc/auto.server on /mnt/server type autofs (rw,relatime,…
In the parent mount point for the CIFS share, autofs created the folder data.
Step 2 & 3
Run an app that is accessing the share
ls /mnt/share/data
Accessing now the content of /mnt/server/data will automatically mount the CIFS share.
df -h
Mount
//192.168.0.164/data on /mnt/server/data type cifs (rw,relatime
Step 4
Assure that no app is using the share and wait until the specified timeout occurs. Check with mount and df to see that the share is umounted.
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