June 2026 update

In keeping with the hardware updates, Marks Rpi Cluster is also getting some new kit. I have been buying some Pi5 (4GB) but the resellers are limiting them to one per customer so it takes multiple orders. I'm adding another 4 of them to the cluster. I have ordered one of those stackable things you put them in made from clear acrylic and some metal posts, waiting for it to come from China.

The Pi4's continue processing Einstein BRP4 work. The Pi5's are also doing Einstein BRP4 work but have done a few Asteroids tasks in between. The Pi5's are up to 900M credits for Einstein. It will take them a while to beat the Pi4's which have been running longer. 

 

27th of June update

The stackable Pi Case arrived. All 4 Pi5's arrived and are up and running. The 4 new Pi5's are sitting loose on a table top at the moment. That brings the cluster up to 8 Pi5's for compute. I need to assemble the case which has no instructions so its going to be trial and error.

I had issues with the new Pi5's losing their network connection when plugged into the same switches that the EC12's use. Each EC12 has 12 x Pi4's plugged into a 16 port switch. Each 16 port switch is in turn plugged directly into the router. I dug out an old 5 port gigabit switch, plugged it into a different switch and the 4 new Pi's are connected to it which seems to have resolved the connectivity issue. 

I got a couple of Noctua 80mm 5v fans. I'll attach one to the side so it draws air across the Pis. The Pi5's all have the official active cooling fan/heatsink so its there to help them. There isn't much space between each layer. The other case I have is using a slim 80x10mm 5v fan which doesn't move much air. The Noctua fans are 80x25mm and have a higher airflow. The Noctua fans come with a USB type A adapter cable so I can plug them into one of the Pi5's for power.

 

March 2026 update

Currently the 4 x Pi5 nodes are running Einstein.

There was a debian point release so I need to go through each of the Pi4's and update them before I can bring them online. 

Purchasing the Sandisk High Endurance micro SD cards (yes I use them for the Pi's primary storage) I can no longer get the 32GB versions. It seems Sandisk have moved to 64GB as the smallest size these days with a price increase.

Rpi Imager 2 and Dec 2025 Raspberry Pi OS

I took the opportunity over the Christmas break to upgrade one of the Edge Cluster 12's to Raspberry Pi OS based upon Debian Trixie. They had been running the Debian Bookworm version of Raspberry Pi OS. Unfortunately I ran across a couple of problems.

There is a "design feature" with the Raspberry Pi Imager v2 where the Raspberry Pi foundation have removed the ability to customize images, so one cannot set the host name, user name, password or other settings. Well technically you can but only by writing JSON code for the Imager. I strongly recommend you keep Imager 1.9 if you need this ability.

Coupled with being unable to customize the image the Dec 2025 release of Raspberry Pi OS has changed some boot parameters so one cannot (even using Imager 1.9) customize the image.

For more information you can read the bug report on Github HERE where the developer has closed the bug as "won't fix".

Despite the above I managed (after a lot of attempts) to get 12 new micro SD cards imaged and replaced the existing ones in one of the Edge Cluster 12's. Those 12 Pi4's have been running Einstein@home work since. The Pi5's were upgraded soon after the Raspberry Pi OS based on Debian Trixie became available. That leaves me with another Edge Cluster 12 (ie 12 x Pi4s) to upgrade.

My current install process is to use Imager 1.9 and the Oct 2025 release to image the SD card. Once done and the Pi has booted do an "apt update" and "apt upgrade -y" to get it up to date.

 

Running slowly

Hot weather has returned so the farm is working in between.

As well as the weather the Raspberry Pi foundation released Raspberry Pi OS based on Debian Trixie on the 1st of October. I have been updating the support nodes to see how things work out. The only major change is the swap space is now 2GB and they're using zram for swap. I've updated all the Pi5's but have yet to update the Pi4 compute nodes.

Another quirk I found was the "lite" version doesn't include nfs-common so after getting stuck I found out you have to install it before you can use an nfs mounted drive. The full version or Raspberry Pi OS (ie with a desktop) includes nfs-common.