Is HW Platfom "armv5tel" Supported?

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1

Hi all, i have here some HW with Debian 11 (bullseye), output of uname -a:

Linux 6.3.8-kirkwood-tld-1 #1 PREEMPT Wed Jun 21 02:30:10 PDT 2023 armv5tel GNU/Linux

Unfortunately, when I install pihole it gives the error, that the HW is not supported.

Somewhere I read when installation runs on error on any supported OS, I shall contact developer/provider/support.

So I do this...

Any ideas or shall I just upgrade to bookworm - would that suffice already?

Bestest

Thilo

2

No.
Pi-hole v6 doesn't officially support this architecture. Pi-hole uses alpine Linux to run the build process. Alpine Linux dropped support for ARMv5. Also, we know Debian is planing to drop ARMv5 support.

Maybe you can compile your own FTL, or use this unofficial FTL version, created by @davygravy.

3

To clarify this (or my understanding of it)....The upcoming Trixie will be supported for another 2-3 years (just the installer infrastructure and some other items will no longer be available)... and then after official support is dropped, there may be unofficial support... community support, so to speak. Archives will stick around for a while after that, as well...

Details here... read through for facts...

In reality, no one I know uses the Debian Installer to install on their kirkwood/armel system... we almost universally use a tarball created from debootstrap... and then of course, console or netconsole to control the u-boot booting process and kernel arguments... much easier and faster... That's what the distinction is here...

And @rdwebdesign 's comment does (to me at least) clearly underline the fact that Kirkwood/armel is 15 years old or so... it is a good point.

Just my $.02.

:+1:

PS: back in 2012 or so I think I did actually use Martin Michlmayr's installer from Debian... but that as they say, is history...

4

a) Understand - not suported any more..... :frowning:
b) True, I also use the tarball from debootstrap to create an os on USB stick to boot kirkwood/armel from it and control the u-boot via serial. Described in

(quite recent, latest post in March this year )

Question @ davygravy: Can you please explain, why do you mention installation unsing the tarball from debootstrap here?
How is this issuse ("b)" above) linked to the topic? - Just want to understand....

5

This looks like bodhi's rootfs - that should be fine.

The only relevant things I can say are:

  1. Kirkwood devices were engineered over 10 years ago... so they are stuck at .8 to 1.2GHz for their processors... and usually 128-256MB. 128MB is on the "skinny" side of what you need to run pi-hole, so minimize RAM usage and CPU cyles where you can: I run w/o dbus and avahi, without systemd (sysvinit instead - still works fine), the newer chrony (instead of ntpd-sec), and also the udhcpc instead of the default dhcp client. This minimizes usage of resources and saves it all for pi-hole.
  2. bodhi's work is fine! He has done a great job of fostering the community there. I'm not sure if his tarball (latest) is the current Bookworm or the upcoming Trixie.
  3. If you have Bullseye, update very soon to Bookworm. Then later this summer you can update to Trixie.
  4. YES it will be supported somewhat - not officially here for pi-hole but still supported for years in Debian - ... but 15 year old equipment is 15 year old equipment. Still, my Pogoplugs run pi-hole perfectly for my situation. I use the pihole-FTL binaries from my github site: GitHub - davygravy/FTL: The Pi-hole FTL engine . Yes, these are unofficial, and unsupported but they work for me and a few others here that still run Kirkwood/armel.
  5. In another 5 years when it has matured, I'll by a single-board-computer RISCV style... :slight_smile:

HTH, regards,

Dave

6

After further reading your post @pilo , I understand your question better than I did. I'd suggest:

  1. upgrade successfully to Bookworm (Debian 12.9).
  2. Sort out your RAM usage. 128 or 256 MB. If you have only 128MB, think about minimizing usage of RAM and CPU cyles.
  3. You'll have to research a bit on this sight regarding armel/armv5tel/kirkwood... there are a few threads that explain the process... the install scripts need to be selected carefully from pihole git feeds and you have to pass flags like PIHOLE_SKIP_OS_CHECK=true and PIHOLE_SKIP_FTL_CHECK=true, prepending these to the ./basic-install.sh command.

Some of the background for this is here ( Unsupported/binary branch: 1 proposal and 1 question ) and in a few other places.

Also, you'll have to make sure you pull the correct git branches... this is in flux right now and IIRC it is not in the main installer branches, but in unsupported/binary or similarly titled.

7

Hi davygravy, thanks for your valuable hints on reactivation/using this old piece of HW. At least - apart from power consumption - it is more sustainable to use it for anything than to put into garbage.
I will carefully read and follow your instructions if I decide to go thatt way and report here.

...I still did not find an answer to my question above:
How/Why is the debian-os installation method (installer or tarball w debootstrp) linked to the use/installationo/version of pihole?
Or did I miss something here?
(Not urgent - I just don't like white spots in my knowledge)

FYI: I have another no that old but still old piece of HW (armv7l , 4 core) that I reactivated to proivide pihole service with the help of this forum. I t just needs to reconfigure the web server. Pihole 6 up and running.

One more question; What is the reason, for PiHole to bring its own web-server?
Or: Why ist apache not sufficient for PiHole?

8

I think that these 2 issues are mostly unrelated. If Debian is running OK/minimalized on your Armel device, then it should be OK. If your RAM/CPU utilization is minimized, then the system is more likely to be stable long term.

Hint: you may have to shorten the database retention time period... the DB can grow quite HUGE!

Excellent!

Apache, lighttpd, nginx, etc are all valuable web servers, but the new civet-based webserver does the job nicely, and overall helps. In my humble/honest opinion, those full-fledged webservers are unnecessary (maybe even overkill) for this type of application... for pihole we just need to offer a nice lua-based web interface.

9

ah - got it - thanks again for explanation!