Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

What people use for hardware now that pcengines' apus are eol?


OpenBSD supports Ubiquiti's octeon processor. I thought it would be neat to run my router on a non-x86 CPU, but I don't have personal experience with these boxes yet.

https://www.openbsd.org/octeon.html


I'm curious to hear others' answers to this question as well. I've been looking into building my own OpenBSD based home router and so far thinking a Protectli Vault [1] would fit the bill.

1. https://protectli.com


I was recently looking at some Banana Pi boards, but I'm not sure if any of them other than the R1 will run OpenBSD. HardKernel's ODROID-H3 is tempting, but the cases are not great looking.


I don't think OpenBSD supports it, but the Traverse Ten64 has ten gigabit Ethernet ports, eleven antenna mounts, and up to 32GB of ECC RAM:

https://www.crowdsupply.com/traverse-technologies/ten64


I've been using a NUC! My only "complaint" is that the model I'm using only has 1 built in NIC, had to add another via USB. It works very well.


You could use VLANs and ditch the extra USB NIC if you want.


I ran such a topology for a while, aka "router on a stick". I had a two-port trunk link to a cheap Cisco small business switch, it worked great. It could also have been easily virtualized with a single virtual NIC, but I don't like virtualizing my router anymore, hah.


They state on their webpage that they have bought a lifetime supply of those chips. I wouldn't call them EOL


As I have none, it is for me.


EOL as in "no longer sold" or "cannot install new openbsd releases on them"?



They're no longer produced but still serve as a perfectly capable home router. Even my previous APU 1 is still a rock solid performer.


What's the situation wrt the install process? I remember having to use a non-official distribution of OpenBSD.


It should be completely possible using only the official install media, then and now. To do this today, download the AMD64 install74.img (like an ISO, but for flash media), write the image to a USB disk, connect to the APU1/2 via serial, plug in the drive and power up the APU, then follow the installation script.

Once booted, run fw_update and syspatch to make sure the firmware and system is up-to-date.


Protectil VP2420 here.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: