yes the script would need to include mounting the storage in fstab. Everything from a fresh pi installation to a running node. fstab, docker, etc
(but you’re also right, I did not read the whole thread, just maybe 20 posts…)
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We have this:
It could help to install the storagenode on raspberry.
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yeah it’s already pretty good but still too complicated for some users. Personally I’m not sure you should run a node if you can’t follow that instructions but afaik storjlabs wants to enable everybody to run a node so an installation script would be better.
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I think even with a script it would still need some input from a user especially when mounting a hard drive… everything else the script could be do able but would still need input from the user. That means a user still need some kinda knowledge of what they are doing. Need IP, you need eth address, You would need location of identity and location of data less it has a default location that can be done without the user.
It really means unless everything is ran though a script the user still has to have some knowledge of what they are doing.
Windows GUI is by far the most user friendly possible.
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Well input yes but not much. The identity generation can be done on a pi, even if it takes a very long time. The harddrive can be detected by the script and the user asked for confirmation (typically people setting up a pi for a node without technical knowledge will only have one harddrive connected anyway).
You definitely need the dyndns address and port and an eth address. That’s really the only things a script can’t set up.
Windows GUI might be the most user friendly to set up but from what I read on the forums by far not the most reliable solution.
Yeah also It would streamline the setup if it allows you to select what you want it to do (Option 1) setup identity or skip to (option 2) add new hard drive (step 3) would download the binary files run setup so then the config is created then allow you to input the info you need to. (step 4) would run a test to make sure ports are open. (step 5) would tell you to open a browser to see if you can see the dashboard.
Also another script to run a docker version.
It’s do able for sure and it would be nice to have for everyone who wants to setup new nodes as well.
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I think a script would be great, would help bring more people like myself in who have been life long PC and mac users but love the idea of getting into Storj maybe using a Rasberry Pi. I’ve got tons of space to bring online once I’m comfortable with my setup and limited Linux knowledge. PC is to powerfully to run 24x7 so the Pi is the perfect solution for many videographers and photographers like myself who storage isn’t an issue.
Well things are not as easy and straigt forward as it might seem.
What’s great with RPis is that they draw little power and are cheap. But:
- the OS being on SD card, it requires a lot of tinkering to prevent it from wearing off too fast. This said, the RPi4 now supports booting from an usb drive (it’s pretty new).
- they do not provide enough power for external 2.5" drives, one should provide power to them, which means buying a powered hub for instance.
- I experienced some reboot failures - this could be just me, but my Pi is not super-reliable when it comes to rebooting.
- If the case is not properly ventilated, they tend to get too hot when the CPU works hard (which has never been an issue with Storj so far).
- If an external screen is needed for some debugging, one needs an adaptor, as there are no regular hdmi sockets on it.
- They do not come with any RTC (real time clock, usually integrated in computers’ motherboards), which could result in wrong date and time if something goes wrong with NTP at boot time.
Otherwise, they’re pretty neat 
If you only use your pi for storj, your SD card will probably survive your connected HDD…
using 2.5" drives for storj is not a good idea anyway. They are not built for this kind of usage.
Might be a slight annoyance but typically you don’t reboot your pi unless you have a power loss. For upgrades you will monitor the reboot anyway.
Well the micro hdmi to hdmi adapter is certainly cheaper than the energy consumption of a bigger pc.
How often has that really been a problem? If you start the pi without internet available, the node won’t be working either way. And when internet is available, ntp will sync and the node should be fine.
You’ll find problematic scenarios with every setup but the probability of windows messing up an update is way higher than your pi rebooting and ntp failing.
So to summarize: tl;dr
The pi is the best setup if you care about the sweet spot of energy consumption, price and stability.
Faire enough, just sharing my view ^^
I agree it’s still a nice solution, just not as perfect out of the box as some might think, that is all.
Agreed.
Of course, but that’s all I had when starting with Storj. Although they tend to consume way less power per TB, compared to 3.5" (except for 10+TB disks).
I don’t know but I wouldn’t bet on that.
The fake hardware clock writes once per hour on it, syslogs and some other app logs write on it too, there is some swap by default, but most importantly: unless you redirect Storj logs to an external disk (which is the way to go, but I suspect most regular SNOs don’t do it), Nodes are going to constantly write their logs to it via docker.
I killed an SD card once by writing once per minute to it for 2 years.
So IMHO all this needs some tuning to relieve the SD card from most writes.
I agree, the writes to the SD Card have to be minimized. The storj logs need to be redirected otherwise the card will surely die soon.
Not sure how much a typical setup writes to the SD-Card. I just set up a PI4 4GB with zfs (but not for storj) and it looks like it is not writing more than 1MB per minute but it’s not running much either.
So if I can keep it below 10MB/minute (which is rather much already) it shouldn’t die in 2 years:
10MB/min*60min*24*365*2=10.5TB
Assuming you use a 32GB card, it should be able to survive at least 1k writes so it should survive 32TB of writes if wear leveling works correctly.
So 2 years shouldn’t be a problem. Of course if you don’t redirect your storj logs that adds 40-80MB per day, which actually doesn’t seem that much now that I compare it… Guess I should hunt down what is writing 1MB/min 
I agree! 
The card that died was a 4GB, and my current card is only a 8GB one though, so its lifespan is way shorter than your 32GB example.
I’s not clear to me what kind of wear leveling system is implemented on SD cards… It’s far from being as advanved as the ones on SSDs, I suppose?
Oh yeah those 4 or 8GB cards will of course die significantly faster. It’s probably also depending on the amount of free space because I doubt that the wear leveling would reallocate “static” data. Therefore if the system uses 2GB, that part is fairly static and therefore you only have 2 or 6GB on the card left that can be written to.
Wear leveling on SD-Cards is probably not as good as the ones on SSDs but it should still allow for 1k write cycles. Easiest way to increase the lifetime is to buy a bigger SD-Card. They are not expensive anymore and starter kits typically come with 32GB anyway.
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