NS8 for ARM (Aarch64)

[LayLow (HF)]

Hi,

What is te current (official) take on NS8 on ARM (Aarch64) please? Any ref docs to testing/trials?

Add to docs quickstart x86_64 architecture core support

Ns8 on raspberry pi 4?

Somehow pip needs to (re)build something so needed to install gcc and python3-dev. After: apt-get install gcc python3-dev curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NethServer/ns8-core/main/core/install.sh > install.sh bash install.sh ghcr.io/tbaile/core:main The node is up and running on arm64 (aarch64) [image]

TIA

cc @mark_nl @Tbaile

[alefattorini (Alessio Fattorini)]

I think that this is the last news about it

ARMing yourself with NethServer 8

Talk by @Tbaile about that [ARMing yourself with NethServer 8]

[LayLow (HF)]

@Tbaile , anything you can share please?

[Tbaile (Tommaso Bailetti)]

Not much actually, this hasn’t been picked up internally and the focus for now is to add missing features and bugfixes.

We know is possible to run NS8 on ARM, with the right compilation options (example can be found in my fork) however, some things are to be changed for this to happen:

• Change build tool for the core and the modules: as stated in the video, Buildah at the moment has fallen very far behind the container build features. It still provides a OCI standard container, but has a lot of features that are missing (some of them are coming or have been added, but I don’t think they’ll ever keep up)
• Build modules with cross platform in mind: While I really like ARM, I think we can all agree that building something cross-platform is really tedious and you need a lot of knowledge to make things right inside a container. Most of the available images are already built for ARM (traefik, redis, and so on). For instance, if the module relies on a binary, that needs to be built for any available architecture. While this is pretty simple on the surface, wait until ARM emulation takes 2.5x times the build time. Some optimization must be done and I know how just because I’ve spent over than 4 years on the matter (every build process is very different, sadly)

Also keep in mind that support and testing might be different for ARM. I’d expect for ARM to work the same as x64, however we all know that if something can go wrong, it will. So something supported by Nethesis as for now it’s not something forseeable in the near future due to double the work to be done for testing. A doable thing might to have forks of the current modules and core to be kept up to date and ARM-Ready and then released only for community, which raises a lot of headaches in how to do it and how much time it takes.

Feel free to ask anything, I’ll try to answer when I can (right now I’m on a studying streak due to an early September exam )

[LayLow (HF)]

@Tbaile

Feel free to ask anything, I’ll try to answer when I can (right now I’m on a studying streak due to an early September exam )

Thanks, and good luck!