ACEMAGICIAN T8PLUS (Intel N95)

[darksky]

@frollic

can't answer you question, but if you don't need 2.5GbE and 4 ports, get
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C3TLTRPF for $150, the difference in
performance is less than 4%.

This is a nice x86 mini box for a router/firewall.

Power consumption

• Idle = 6 W (0.01 loadavg)
• Snort3 IPS with no network load = 6 W (0.08 loadavg)
• During speed test = 9-11 W
• Running stress with 4 threads = 13 W

lspci

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Device 4618
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Device 46d2
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Device 54ed
00:14.2 RAM memory: Intel Corporation Device 54ef
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Device 54e0
00:17.0 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Device 54d3
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 54bb
00:1d.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 54b2
00:1d.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 54b3
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Device 5482
00:1f.3 Audio device: Intel Corporation Device 54c8
00:1f.4 SMBus: Intel Corporation Device 54a3
00:1f.5 Serial bus controller: Intel Corporation Device 54a4
01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 15)
02:00.0 Network controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8821CE 802.11ac PCIe Wireless Network Adapter
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 15)

[slh]

Installing OpenWRT in a X86 System in a partition, having both WIN11 and OpenWRT

Hello, Im trying to install OpenWRT in a X86 device it is the ACEMAGICIAN T8 PLUS 8GB 256GB What I'm trying to do is make a 256gb (of 20GB approx) partition on the drive, having OpenWRT and Windows 11 on the same device, later choosing which one I want to boot, using GRUB (Open WRT by default). The problem I'm encountering is that the Etcher and Rufus programs don't recognize the 20GB partition I've made on the SSD (they only detect USBs) therefore, and at the moment, I'm not able to do what …

[iplaywithtoys]

Beat me to it.

[iplaywithtoys]

The 22.03.5 x86_64 image will work, out of the box, but you won't have working Wi-Fi, only Ethernet.

Ask me how I know...

[darksky]

Nice find, thank you @slh... I will need to read through that in detail to pick out the network kmods. From the skimming I just did, reply #80 calls out:

kmod-amazon-ena kmod-amd-xgbe kmod-bnx2 kmod-button-hotplug
kmod-e1000 kmod-e1000e kmod-forcedeth kmod-fs-vfat
kmod-igb kmod-igc kmod-ixgbe kmod-nft-offload kmod-r8169 kmod-tg3

I am not entirely sure I need all of those...

@iplaywithtoys - I do not need wifi on the box but I suppose it would be nice to have for just scanning purposes but I saw your recent replies in that thread indicating (as of 26-Jun-2023) no support for the WiFi stuff (RTL8821CE). Would you mind posting the output of the following on yours assuming it is up and running?

opkg list-installed | grep kmod

[slh]

@darksky

From the skimming I just did, reply #80 calls out:

kmod-amazon-ena kmod-amd-xgbe kmod-bnx2 kmod-button-hotplug
kmod-e1000 kmod-e1000e kmod-forcedeth kmod-fs-vfat
kmod-igb kmod-igc kmod-ixgbe kmod-nft-offload kmod-r8169 kmod-tg3

I am not entirely sure I need all of those...

You won't, Installing OpenWRT in a X86 System in a partition, having both WIN11 and OpenWRT - #127 by iplaywithtoys clearly hints at only r8169 (and vfat for UEFI) being required, everything else is just the default for generic x86_64 images.

[iplaywithtoys]

It's not up and running right now, but I did reset it to factory defaults after posting in the other thread. So whatever kmods are installed are those which ship with the x86_64 stable 22.03.5 image. And those are good enough for the on-board Ethernet and on-board storage to work. And, I assume, for USB storage to work, since I booted the thing from a USB stick containing OpenWRT before writing OpenWRT to the internal SSD.

[darksky]

That's great to hear. Looking forward to seeing if this thing has the CPU horsepower to allow snort3 to work in IPS mode.

[darksky]

I am OK with having the image run via squashfs so I can avoid fsck issues on a live ext4 partition. What are pros/cons of using openwrt-x86-64-generic-squashfs-combined-efi.img.gz vs openwrt-x86-64-generic-squashfs-combined.img.gz for this hardware?

Reference: https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/installation/openwrt_x86

[frollic]

EFI is for newer bioses, they're the same, from an openwrt point of view.

[darksky]

OK, so it doesn't matter. Next question is I am building my own image with custom packages and with CONFIG_TARGET_ROOTFS_PARTSIZE=512 which despite being squashfs, should give me 0.5 GB of root partition space. Any downsides to not using the ext4 "live" filesystem? I believe using squashfs will protect the media from potential FS damage in a situation of ungraceful shutdown.

[frollic]

@darksky

OK, so it doesn't matter.

it could, depending on your computers' bios settings, but I'd start with the EFI one.

@darksky

I believe using squashfs will protect the media from potential FS damage in a situation of ungraceful shutdown

I've "always" used ext4, and never really had any issues, but sure, the risk's always there.

[Exio0]

@iplaywithtoys

reset it to factory defaults

I will reinstall it from 0 and with no "extra" packets , now i had installed OpenWRT in that TP-Link RE200, configured it with the wifi hotspot and then connecting it to the x86 (eth0) and then connected my laptop to eth1. all working, so... ill reinstall all, not for nothing, just to not have S*it in that system.

Hope it works well...

[fodiator]

I got the same unit. Booted from USB to check performance. Basic routing seems underwhelming.

For those knowledgeable: should running from USB cause performance issues? I had assumed all is in RAM memory, so the boot medium would not be a bottleneck once the system is up…

[slh]

@fodiator

should running from USB cause performance issues?

Not (really) for OpenWrt (boot times might differ a bit, but not by much) - for other operating systems it could be very much.

[frollic]

USB is used for booting the device, not routing.

[iplaywithtoys]

@fodiator

Basic routing seems underwhelming.

Huh. That's disappointing. I haven't actually put mine into my network yet; I've been fiddling with different "can I get this to work?" scenarios so I've not tested its performance yet.

Still, thanks for the heads-up. I'll see if I can set aside some time to put it through its paces at the weekend.

[darksky]

@fodiator

Basic routing seems underwhelming.

On what do you base this statement? I don't have enough time to get mine setup for my snort3 testing, but iperf3 seems fine.

EDIT: I removed the iperf3 results here because I realized that the test was flawed since the RPi4B does not go through an extra switch as the t8plus does. I need to get the t8plus setup properly and then replace it physically where the RPi4B is for an accurate comparison.

I am curious what data @fodiator generated to support the "underwhelming" assertion.

[darksky]

@iplaywithtoys - do you have your /boot double mounted?

# df -h
Filesystem                Size      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/root               495.6M    140.3M    339.9M  29% /
tmpfs                     3.8G      4.4M      3.8G   0% /tmp
/dev/sda1                31.9M      6.2M     25.7M  20% /boot
/dev/sda1                31.9M      6.2M     25.7M  20% /boot
tmpfs                   512.0K         0    512.0K   0% /dev
/dev/sda3               233.1G      2.1M    221.2G   0% /mnt/data

[iplaywithtoys]

Can't remember, and I'm not near the device right now. I'll take a look later this afternoon.