Server for a boat

Good day, friends. Since catching the self-hosting bug, I've set up a couple of Proxmox home servers with a bunch of services I enjoy.

Now I'd like to set up a server and local network on my sailboat so I can self-host servarr, pihole, and other services while traveling. The tricky part is that everything on the boat is 12V and I would rather not use an inverter, if possible. Also, it needs to be ultra-low power so I can leave it on at all times and not to deplete my batteries too much.

Criteria:

  • ultra-low power
  • Small form factor
  • runs on 12V
  • 10 TB of storage plus ability to make full local backup
  • Capable of hosting servarr, audiobookshelf, freshrss, etc. via docker
  • HDMI output
  • Full local mirror/backup of the entire file system, including the media library.
  • We will have two laptops and two Android phones to access the server, so the server doesn't need to run a desktop environment.

I'll have a mobile wifi router and a cellular signal booster (or maybe Starlink eventually) for internet access. Since internet bandwidth will be limited and expensive while traveling, I don't want to have to re-download a massive media llibrary if the storage media fail. Thus, I want the media library to be mirrored or fully backed up or synced locally.

What hardware and Linux distro would you use in this situation?

scholar ,

This sounds like a job for a raspberry pi 5 with an m.2 hat for storage, software is a less important choice here, so ubuntu's raspberry pi flavour would be my choice. Just make sure you give it power in a form it likes.

FigMcLargeHuge ,

I just got an email about a new power supply board for the rpi5 - PD Power Extension Board for Raspberry Pi 5. It's on their pihut website and is $20. Has multiple input types.

OneCardboardBox ,

For backup, maybe a blu-ray drive? I think you would want something that can withstand the salty environment, and maybe resist water. Thing is, even with BDXL discs, you only get a capacity of 100GiB each, so that's a lot of disks.

What about an offsite backup? Your media library could live ashore (in a server at a friend's house). You issue commands from your boat to download media, and then sync those files to your boat when it's done. If you really need to recover from the backup, have your friend clone a disk and mail it to you.

Do you even need a backup? Would data redundancy be enough? Sure if your boat catches fire and sinks, your movies are gone, but that's probably the least of your problems. If you just want to make sure that the salt and water doesn't destroy your data, how about:

  1. A multi-disk filesystem which can tolerate at least 1 failure
  2. Regular utilities scanning for failure. BTRFS scrubs, for example.
  3. Backup fresh disks kept in a salt and water resistant container (original sealed packaging), to swap any failing disk, and replicate data from any good drives remaining.
  4. Documentation/practice to perform the aforementioned disk replacement, so you're not googling manpages at sea.

This would probably be cheapest and have the least complexity.

HumanPerson ,

They said they want a local backup so they don't have to redownload because bandwidth is expensive. I think a RAID makes more sense. I also don't think btrfs is a great idea for a boat. Power failures will probably be somewhat common, and btrfs is not the most stable, so I don't think I would trust it in weird conditions. Documentation is definitely a great idea though.

OneCardboardBox ,

BTRFS should be stable in the case of power loss. That is to say, it ought to recover to a valid state. I believe the only unstable modes are RAID 5/6.

I'd recommend BTRFS in RAID1 mode over mdadm RAID1 + ext4. You get checksumming and scrubs to detect drive failures and data corruptions. You also have snapshotting, in case you're prone to the occasional fat-fingered rm -rf.

HumanPerson ,

For hardware, I would go with sata ssds for storage. I also would recommend a separate boot drive as it makes re installing without loosing data a breeze. You could go with a new processor from intel or amd, and make sure it has onboard graphics. You should also go into the BIOS, enable xmp (always do that. It's free performance), and look for power saving settings. You could go for arm, but most arm computers lack expansion options and that can mean you use USB for drives which is unreliable. I think dc atx power supplies are a thing, but I know nothing about them. I would recommend doing ext4 and a raid, ideally 6 or 10. That will give you stability (from filesystem issues) and good reliability. I know RAID is not a backup, but in this case it may be what you want. RAID is for uptime, and it would be able to usually buy you enough time to finish your trip, or you could even have spare drives onboard and fix it while you're out in like 10 minutes. Also, I would highly recommend researching how to power it well. Starting an engine can mess with the power and could fry a computer. I don't know if a dc ups is a thing, but if it is, get it.

For software, use whatever you want, mostly. I always use debian for servers, but proxmox would probably be fine. You can use powertop to make sure it runs efficiently.

Shadow ,
@Shadow@lemmy.ca avatar

I'd recommend avoiding spinning disks and going all ssd if possible.

You can get 12v in atx power supplies.

You may want to consider something like a Lenovo tiny with a few large ssds.

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