2nd of May

Marks Rpi Cluster continues running 24/7. After purchasing a couple more 32GB micro SD cards last week the cluster now consists of:

4 x Pi3 compute nodes

8 x Pi4 8GB compute nodes

3 x Pi4 2GB support nodes

Pi-Hole

I installed Pi-Hole on a Pi4. Its a caching DNS server that can use blocklists to prevent access to websites. It comes with a list of 80,000 advertising websites that it can block and has a webpage to show statistics. I also use a caching proxy server (squid) to speed up access by caching frequently used web traffic. I had a small list of about 30 advertising websites that I block with it.

Having installed Pi-Hole I pointed my proxy server at it as a DNS server and commented out blocking of advertising websites in the proxy server. The two worked fine together. Pi-Hole has a much more complete list of advertising sites than I ever had.

The next step was to install Pi-Hole on the same Pi as the proxy server, that way they don't need to communicate across the network. I installed it on the proxy server Pi4 and adjusted the proxy server to use it instead. Its doing its job of suppressing the adverts on most websites. It doesn't get all of them but its certainly getting most of them and internet access seems seem slightly faster (due to not downloading ads).

You can get Pi-Hole from https://pi-hole.net/ 

They have versions for Raspberry Pi OS, Ubuntu (ARM and x64), Debian (ARM, x64 and i386), Fedora (ARM and x64) and CentOS (x64 only).

25th of April

I purchased some more 32GB Micro SD cards and swapped out the two Pi4 4GB with Pi4 8GB. That means the cluster now consists of:

4 x Pi3 compute nodes

8 x Pi4 8GB compute nodes

3 x Pi4 2GB support nodes

I've have been using one of the Pi4 4GB to run Pi-Hole and its been working fine on its own Pi. I will probably combine it with the proxy server and have them both run on the same Pi4.

I have plans to use the other Pi4 4GB for a Pi NAS, not that I need lots of disk space, but that will be for another blog post.

17th of April

10 million 

The cluster passed 10 million credits for Einstein@home about two weeks ago, but I didn't notice at the time. Its had a separate account since April 2016, which means it has taken around 5 years to reach this point.

 

 

Rearranging

Two of the Pi3 nodes were retired and two Pi4 (8GB) nodes replaced them. That increases the flexibility of the cluster as the Pi4's are faster and have more memory. The cluster now consists of:

3 x Pi4 (2GB) as support nodes

4 x Pi3 compute nodes

2 x Pi4 (4GB) compute nodes

6 x Pi4 (8GB) compute nodes

The recent changes at Roesetta@home have meant the Pi4 4GB are no longer able to run their work so I will swap them for Pi4 8GB, after I buy some more micro SD cards.

Pi^4 case and Meanwell PSU

This is one of the MeanWell power supplies I bought months ago to run the Pi4's. As you can see a bare-bones PSU but capable of outputting 14amps at 5v, which is enough to run about 7 Pis without peripherals.

 

And here is one in a cover back from the 3D printing place. This was their prototype which needs more work but it was hard enough to get it back from them. They had it and the Pi^4 case for almost 6 months.

 

This is the Pi^4 case (Mk I) that I did some years ago. I have changed the fans to 40x20mm (the original had 40x10mm) and its now got 8GB Pi4's in there. I had a revision to the top but the sample they printed off wasn't right.

Now that I have finally got them back I hooked up the PSU and its running the Pi4's. If I can get the design for the PSU and case revised I hope to run 3 of these.

Rosetta@home decided to change their minimum system requirements to 6.6GB of free memory and 8.5GB of free disk space. As a result the two Pi4's 4GB with the black heatsink case that you see behind the Pi^4 case are no longer able to get work from the project so they're now running Einstein only.

I also had to buy four 32GB micro SD cards as the 16GB ones that I normally use didn't quite have enough free space. I got four of the Sandisk Ultra Plus which seem to be a little faster than the Sandisk Ultra. I usually get the smallest, cheapest ones as they wear out eventually.