Hardware for internet cube

Discuss
,
1

Hello, I recently started building an internet cube, with Yunohost, an Olimex Lime 2 ARM card and a neutral VPN (Franciliens.net). I managed to make (almost) everything work. I deeply thank Yunohost developers and the documentation, which is really great for beginners like me !

However, the operation of some important apps (for me), like Nextcloud (for file sync), Piwigo (for photo sharing) or Cryptpad is really very slow, and I wonder if I should not evolve my hardware. I would eventually be willing to give up open hardware but, ideally, I would like to keep the spirit of the internet cube with low power consumption and limited cost.

  • I read a bit everywhere that the Raspberry Pi (4 or 5) is used enough for self-hosting : would that be enough?

  • Some mini PCs seem relatively affordable.

  • I was also told about APU2 cards (PC Engines). Have any of you tried this option ?

  • There is also the option of the old laptop, but I’m afraid that requires skills that I don’t have.

I take any advice or experience back!

PS : This discussion is also open in French

4

Hi Microbe,

Welcome to the forums!

Slow is a subjective speed of course. I looked up the Olimex you mention, is it that one? The most important bottleneck is the amount of RAM.

I scanned the French thread, which has some excellent replies which I won’t repeat.

You didn’t tell what you use for storage. Is it SATA attached SSD? If you don’t have a swap file or partition yet, you may alleviate the most pressing speed issues by creating that. It won’t be fast of course. Swap via USB or on SD card will work technically, but is super slow.

5

It is indeed the A20-OLinuXino-LIME2 card.

I use a 1Tb SATA SSD (WD Red) on top of the SD card, and I moved the heavy data on it (mainly Nextcloud data), following the doc here.

I’ll dig into the swap partition issue, thanks a lot for this advice !