is a small one-purpose linux "distribution" built just for running BOINC on a PXE booted (or in theory SPI flash) node. It runs purely from initramfs, so there's no need for installing anything. Current target are small Single Board Computers like Raspberry Pi, Pine64, Orange Pi boards etc. i386/amd64 platforms are not built against right now.
Because I always wanted to build a custom linux distribution. As of right now it is very hackish (no proper packaging, but there's a reason which I will explain later).
It is simple. First you build a docker container that works as your toolchain. From there you just compile all packages and then whenever however you want you just pack it all into initramfs. Remember to build kernel modules as well though!
Yes, there's several hacks in there. For example the "packages" are packed without any postinstall/.. scripts so you have to prepare everything in rootfiles/ for all packages beforehand. This may (and most likely will) change eventually though.
Just look into packages/ directory. Not all are included by default though (for example gdb)! And no manual pages nor develop files (headers, symbols, ..) are included at all in the final fs! Adding a new package is straight forward, but not everything can be overriden just yet. Eventually it will be but right now it is enough for my purpose. (See chapter Hackish ways.)
The size of the whole initramfs.zst after packing is 33MB (aarch64) or 26MB (armhf) as of right now with Prometheus exporters (node & boinc) included, alongside current 5.9 kernel modules based on the buildsteps/configs/kernel* configs. Remember however that all modules are after loading REMOVED from the initramfs to save memory! Make sure you specify all the modules you need in /etc/sysconfig/modules (or /storage/modules) for that purpose.
Do note that the initramfs eats (as of this commit) roughly 85MB RAM when running, about 100MB with BOINC. That's still pretty nice even for 512MB devices! More so considering that just Prometheus node exporter takes almost 13MB and BOINC exporter 5.2MB.
The boot process looks for partitions with labels. There is right now only one:
storage-- a place to store your permanent everything, when that partition is discovered it is mounted to /storage, which may be referenced in any other further scripts. If this partition is not discovered, nothing is mounted there, so it may be used formountpointchecks.
Right now there's several flags you can specify as kernel args that are used during the system startup:
uebo.hostname-- hostname to set on startupuebo.nfsdir-- NFS4 dir that is used for /storage mountuebo.boinc.password-- remote BOINC passworduebo.boinc.remote_hosts-- list of remote hosts allowed to connect (separated by comma)uebo.consul-- IP/hostname (with port) that consul listens on that will be used for auto discovery for prometheus exporters (de)registering
Since systemd is far too big for this purpose and sysvinit is too ... not usable for me :) I used runit instead. It provides everything I need and more. Most tools are provided by busybox with some exceptions from e2fsprogs.
Because it felt like it was too much hassle to get into somebody else's scripts and ways of doing. This was whipped up in a few hours and then gradually expanded as I needed. Read "Why".
qemu-system-aarch64 -m 1024 -machine virt -cpu cortex-a53 -bios u-boot.bin -nographic -device e1000,netdev=mynet0 -netdev user,id=mynet0,tftp=/var/lib/tftpboot/,hostfwd=tcp::5555-:22 is one way... or just boot directly on some node :)
Right now this is being developed against aarch64 and armhf, maybe eventually also amd64. No other archs are (from me) planned as of right now.
Target devices that are thoroughly tested and developed against:
- SOPine64 clusterboard (Allwinner A64, arm64)
- Pine64+ (Allwinner A64, arm64)
- QEMU (only for testing and development) (Generic Cortex A53 with AMBA PL011 serial driver + e1000, arm64)
Tested that at least boot:
- ASUS Tinkerboard (Rockchip RK3288, armhf)
- Hardkernel Odroid C1+ (Amlogic S805, armhf, no network boot)
- Orange Pi PC (Allwinner H3, armhf)
Added but not tested:
- Tanix TX6 (Allwinner H6, arm64)
- Orange Pi 4 (Rockchip RK3399, arm64)
To be added when I get the time for it:
- Raspberry Pi 3 (arm64)
- a RK3399-based TV box
Boards I would like to support but don't and won't have:
- Raspberry Pi 1 and 2 (armhf)
Do note that no armhf has been tested on a live device yet as I do not have any in my drawers right now.
If you want another board supported it should be pretty easy - throw required modules into configs/kernel.conf and rebuild the kernel package and test it out. The rest should be universal. Then feel free to send me a pull request with the device :).
I also take donations in the form of devices, the distribution will be adjusted to the device as much as possible and then the device will take part in the compute cabinet.
I've been crunching several projects over the recent months and so far all of them (with a bit of tweaks) all work on Embedded BOINC distro. Namely:
- TN-Grid -- aarch64 or armhf
- Rosetta@Home -- aarch64 + armhf
- World Community Grid -- armhf
- Universe@Home -- armhf
- LHC@Home -- aarch64 only
- Yoyo@Home - armhf
Projects that should work but have not been tested:
- Einstein@Home - should work if you enable beta/testing branch as the mainstream requires ancient libraries -- armhf
Projects that won't work:
- MLC@Home - requires libfuse and possibly other libraries
- anything that is not available for armhf/aarch64 platforms
Projects specified for armhf run on aarch64 platforms if you pack in armhf glibc + libgcc.
Everything is described in Building document.
All performance results can be found in Benchmarks file. The results are added when I get a board up & running. If you want to add a board to the list, please, let me know beforehand so I can give you the same rootfs I use for testing myself!
Since this distro has built-in Prometheus Node Exporter and BOINC Exporter in default profiles and support for registering into Consul autodiscovery, you can add the discovery into Prometheus scraper very easily:
- job_name: node_exporter
scrape_interval: 15s
honor_labels: true
consul_sd_configs:
- server: localhost:8500
services:
- node_exporter
- boinc_exporter
to scrape all nodes & boinc exporters. That's it.
Probably MIT or whatever you want to do with it. There's no secrets, nothing special, just a bunch of shell scripts.
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