Re: [gentoo-user] Rasp-Pi-4 Gentoo servers

[Rich Freeman]

On Sat, Feb 29, 2020 at 10:17 AM Daniel Frey <djqfrey@×××××.com> wrote:
>
> Yes, I'm aware linux does VLANs... I set up netifrc to do this (I
> already have some "smart" switches set up - not full layer 3.) I thought
> about running containers but if I ever have to do something like
> emergency maintenance on my server the whole LAN would be down. Seems
> like a no-brainer to have a tiny device like an RPi to do this.

Yup.  It really depends on your requirements.

My main LAN uses a Pi as a DHCP+DNS server, for exactly this reason.
I don't want to be replacing a hard drive in my server and now my
lights/TV/whatever don't work.  OpenHab runs on a Pi for this reason
as well.

On the other hand, for my other VLANs DHCP+DNS is handled by stuff
like my UniFi gateway or other embedded solutions.  These don't have
the same requirements as my main LAN and being mostly self-contained a
more consumer-oriented solution is fine.  I don't want to be doing
security updates on a bazillion Pis either.

I use VLAN on Linux more for providing services on the VLANs.  Not
that I have much of this.

Don't think I'm running some kind of datacenter.  I just have a
typical home LAN, and I'm running AREDN which basically needs two more
VLANs of its own (one for the network it serves, and one for backhaul
to the internet for tunnels/etc - don't want that stuff getting into
my LAN and the IP address space conflicts in any case).  I could see
adding an IOT VLAN maybe, but the problem is that so much of that
stuff needs to interact.  If I stuck my TVs/Chromecasts/etc on a
separate VLAN, then I couldn't cast to them from my phone or anything
else unless it was on that VLAN too.

> I'm not so sure I'll try installing Gentoo on it though, it doesn't
> really seem suitable for compiling tasks. I'm pretty sure the kit I
> ordered has a card with Raspbian on it, I'll check that out first.

I run Raspbian on my Pis for this reason.  If I had some niche use
where Gentoo added value I'd go with it, but otherwise it just seems
too painful.

As it is I have to compile kernel modules on my RockPro64 boards and
that takes forever even without having to build the actual kernel.
When I've built kernels on those while troubleshooting issues with
PCIe it would literally take an hour or more.

If you do want to run Gentoo on a Pi you really should be cross-compiling it.

Something like Gentoo Reference Platform on steroids would certainly
be nice for ARM.

-- 
Rich