Banana Pi M5 Pro Quick Review

My old ODROID-U3 has been giving me quite some headaches. Its old USB 2.0 ports and 100Mbps Ethernet port are also very limiting in 2023. Its power supply is not the best (not an uncommon issue with HardKernel’s products, certainly not uncommon among the older generation of single board computers). A hardware upgrade is therefore necessary.

I don’t really use it for anything else other than a humble home server to stream videos, music, and sometimes photos. Generally used as a private file share system at home. I already bought an 1 TB USB 3.0 HDD, so I definitely need a device that supports USB 3.0 at least. To not have a limiting network I/O, it should also have 1Gbps Ethernet port.

Why not buying a popular Raspberry Pi 4? Well, I tried, but it’s out of stock everywhere. That’s why I turned to its alternatives, initially I was going to buy another HardKernel’s ODROID product, but its pricing in Europe is just way too high than the price on its website. Unfortunately, (not sure if this has anything to do with Brexit), there is a minimum order requirement to ship to the UK. I’m building a cluster or something, so looking again…

Ta-da! I found Banana Pi, the name is a bit.. knock-off, and the manufacturer is in China, I’ll let you connect the dots. Banana Pi M5 is not the newest model, but it’s comparable to Raspberry Pi 4 and ticks all of my boxes. Long story short, I bought it from Ali-Express where it’s much cheaper than Amazon or other local retailers here. They were also running some sales on bundles, so I ended up buying it with a metal case, yet paying less.

On paper, it provides even better performance than Raspberry Pi 4! More importantly, it’s readily available! One thing I did pay extra attention to is the availability of upstream Linux images, having suffered quite a bit there with HardKernel’s products. Thankfully, Banana Pi has Armbian support (rated platinum for Banana Pi M5, whatever platinum means). To save even few more pennies, it comes with an onboard 16GB eMMC storage!

It’s been faithfully serving its purpose on the shelf next to the router for a couple of weeks now. Reliable little machine that’s fast and responsive! If you’re thinking of buying a single-board computer like Raspberry Pi, but couldn’t find available stocks, Banana Pi might fit in.

A New Termux Mirror

TL; DR. https://termux.librehat.com is a new Termux packages mirror! Maintained by me, synchronised every six hours, located in the United Kingdom, hosted by Oracle Cloud.

In the full article below, I’ll write up how to set up a Termux mirror (or in general, a Debian packages repository mirror).

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Virtual Linux Desktop Experience in Azure

I wouldn’t believe that I will be writing this 10 years ago. It’s 2020 though. Microsoft has improved a lot of services for Linux, ranging from developer tools like Visual Studio Code, to the protagonist today: Azure (cloud computing). Azure has steadfastly become a real credible alternative to Amazon EC2 (or AWS in general). Today, I want to share my experience of using a virtual machine on Microsoft Azure cloud. To be more specific, it is a Linux desktop virtual machine (SLES 15).

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VPS遷移日誌

上個週末得閒把VPS從之前的RamNode遷移到了Amazon Lightsail,主要遷移的內容就是WordPress,涉及到MySQL的導出和導入、Nginx的配置、PHP的配置(從5.6升級到了7.3)、CentOS的簡單設置(從6升級到了7)、Let’s Encrypt SSL證書的配置。下面簡單記載一下遷移的梗概以便有需要的訪客和自己今後查閱。

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Windows下三分钟搭建Shadowoscks服务器端

之前在V2EX上有人问为啥没人做个在Windows上一键运行Shadowsocks服务器端的程序,我只想说……这是因为没人关注我的libQtShadowsocks项目啊!(脑补暴走漫画表情)

所以本文要来告诉这些想要帮别人的“小白”,轻轻松松只要三分钟,无痛@#@%#*(什么鬼?)让Shadowsocks服务端在你的Windows机器上跑起来!不用自己编译,不用安装什么Python、.Net的。

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即日起提供Google学术搜索反向代理服务

Google在大陆是彻底沦陷了,虽然鄙人马上就肉翻了,但是不能置广大同胞于水深火热之中啊,特别是目前无可替代的Google学术搜索(有关部门也真是弱智,居然一口气直接封*.google.com……)。并不是每个人都会爬墙出去的,所以临走前送一个小福利,让大家能顺利访问Google学术搜索,助力科研!

先上普罗大众小白都能看懂的使用指南,技术部分在文章后半段。

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让Shadowsocks服务器同时监听IPv4和IPv6端口

中国电信的天翼校园宽带客户端简直令人发指,现在封锁越发厉害了,已经无法使用系统自带的PPPoE拨号了(所以刚买几天用来作服务器的ODROID-U3暂时下岗了……)。还好,学校有免费的IPv6网络,速度虽然不快,但是至少免费不限流量。正好我的VPS有IPv6地址,于是寻思着怎么利用VPS每月500G的流量来供我上网……一开始看了L2TP、OpenVPN等VPN的办法,发现让它们支持IPv6很麻烦。转念一想,不是还有Shadowsocks嘛!!!Shadowsocks支持IPv4/IPv6协议,但是一开始发现连上去显示套接字连接失败。

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Nginx监听IPv6地址端口的正确操作方法

先在终端下输入以下指令,看看输出结果有没有–with-ipv6,没有的话就需要重新编译带有ipv6支持的nginx了。

nginx -V

编译nginx就不在这里说了,下面讲一下正确地配置nginx让其同时监听IPv4和IPv6的端口(包括http协议的80和https协议的443端口),同时介绍一下只监听IPv6和特定IPv6地址的方法。

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博客已经从Apache切换到Nginx

为了世界的和平,为了爱和正义,鄙人的博客!已经从Apache切换到Nginx了,Хорошо!

占用内存明显下降了有木有!响应速度提升了有木有!128MB的VPS也能轻松凉快不少了有木有!

基本都已经转移过来了,不过部分RewriteRule还没有改写(主要是默认从http往https的跳转)。另外由于CentOS安装的nginx包没有开启spdy支持,我也懒得自己编译,所以SPDY就暂时没有启用了……

2014-03-15补记:

之前脑残忘记配置php-fpm,结果是内存和Swap爆满……万幸没有宕机。今天赶紧修改/etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf,主要改pm相关字段:

pm = dynamic#默认
pm.max_children = 6#平均一个php-fpm子进程占用内存5~10MB,发生内存泄漏时可能占用20M,对于128M内存的VPS,访问量也不大,6个够了
pm.start_servers = 1#小内存VPS启动1个子进程没商量
pm.min_spare_servers = 1#最少闲置子进程1个
pm.max_spare_servers = 3#最多闲置子进程3个
pm.max_requests = 1000#子进程访问量达到1000次后重生,以防止第三方模块/程序内存泄漏的影响

如果访问出现了问题,请在本文后留言。

参考文章: PHP:配置 – Manual

MySQL数据引擎InnoDB和MyISAM互相转换

MySQL(或者社区开源fork的MariaDB)5.5以上支持InnoDB引擎,并将其作为默认数据库引擎。InnoDB带来很多改进,但是对系统资源占用明显增加,对于还在128MB~512MB内存VPS挂WordPress博客的筒子们来说,InnoDB是不合适的,还是得换回MyISAM这批老马!

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