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Will the SOQuartz Compute Modules from Pine work on the TuringPi?
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one.true.beepdog

10/17/2022, 2:51 PM
https://pine64.com/product/soquartz-8gb-compute-module-w/ I think they will, since they mount on RPI Compute Module connectors. Do we know if they'll work with the NVMe slot? Thanks!
j

joesroom

10/17/2022, 3:53 PM
this is what i am hoping... and since they are available for shipping i think i'm going to order one or two to test when the tpi2 arrives
g

gmorrison

10/19/2022, 8:35 AM
Jeff says tl;dr: They're not. At least not yet.
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nsky.

10/19/2022, 9:17 AM
We are going to test and report on these modules
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wvaske

10/19/2022, 12:21 PM
Jeff doesn't say they don't work, just that the software ecosystem isn't as good as raspberry pi. I've got 6 of the soquartz on the blade carriers and they were dead simple to deploy
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jhrozek

10/19/2022, 12:42 PM
What distro were you installing?
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one.true.beepdog

10/19/2022, 3:56 PM
Yeah the software isn't fully baked yet, but I think it will eventually
I was reading the Pine64 update on it, and it's gettin there
https://github.com/armbian/community Pine Quartz64A is in there, and that's the same chip, so it shouldn't be too much more work I hope
either way, the hardware exists :D
j

joesroom

10/19/2022, 6:06 PM
jeff's article was also from nearly a year ago. i skimmed through the github issue he linked and they got a lot of it figured out within a few weeks
there is a very active pine64 community with some super talented firmware/driver devs
I especially liked this line: >>> We just about have the SOQuartz working. Its somewhat easier to work with than the Raspberry Pi as it has fewer hardware bugs.
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wvaske

10/20/2022, 1:10 PM
Armbian UIbuntu Jammy (https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/SOQuartz_Software_Releases) One of the nice features of the Pine64 boards is a socketed eMMC module. You can socket it to a usb key for image burning, then back to the board.
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jhrozek

10/20/2022, 1:47 PM
But that’s the thing. If the best OS available for those boards is Armbian then I’d honestly wait for CM4 or see what’s the Linux support in RK1 looks like. I intend to use my tpi for a Kube cluster and I’d really like to use a distro meant to be used this way (fcos, flatcar or similar). Thanks for the link though I’ll check it out!
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one.true.beepdog

10/20/2022, 3:21 PM
You can lay k3OS over armbian, and it'd work fine
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.thetinkerer

10/21/2022, 6:35 PM
Nothing with a CM4 form factor will work with the NVMe slot because there is only one PCIe slot exposed with a CM4 connector.
d

db0nes

10/22/2022, 4:42 PM
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Pacool7702 [FR, FR]

11/02/2022, 9:04 PM
For me it's working though, not top performance but definitely working with decent performance for my home Rook/CEPH cluster.
Actually, the software is quite decent. What I missed the most, was decent documentation to understand how to get that thing to boot the way I intended to use it (ie. have it somewhat netbooting). All this seems obvious afterwards, but definitely the wiki would need some more love.
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one.true.beepdog

11/02/2022, 9:08 PM
that's nice to know!
I wasn't completely sure the software side was good to go, because I don't own any Quartz64's at the moment
I got a pinebook pro the other day, been fiddling with it
hoping to figure out how to get PopOS on it
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Pacool7702 [FR, FR]

11/02/2022, 9:12 PM
Now my setup is composed of 3 CM4 plus 3 Soquartz on a DeskPi Super 6C all part of an 8 nodes Kubernetes cluster (the two other nodes are two Helios64 acting as control plane nodes and also as iSCSI targets). Funny to get this running but it works nicely once setup.
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one.true.beepdog

11/02/2022, 9:13 PM
noice
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Pacool7702 [FR, FR]

11/02/2022, 9:13 PM
Have now to figure out how to transfer my docker workload on it.
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one.true.beepdog

11/02/2022, 9:13 PM
I have a rockpro64 and two pine64's and a couple Rpis
working on cleaning all that up to be more smart
right now it's just kinda hanging out
the rockpro64 does my arm builds for me, because it's pretty speedy
the pine64's are gonna be k3s control nodes
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Pacool7702 [FR, FR]

11/02/2022, 9:14 PM
Nice
d

db0nes

11/14/2022, 4:19 AM
do you both feel like the SOQUARTZ performs ok in comparison to the RPI CM4?
also you should blog your experience to show others it working
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one.true.beepdog

11/23/2022, 2:43 PM
I'll get some for sure. I expect it to perform as well as the pi4 for compute purposes. My existing pine hardware has worked super well.
d

db0nes

11/25/2022, 7:05 AM
i was able to get 2 (they are sold out atm) looking forward to trying them out
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wvaske

11/25/2022, 5:09 PM
I've got 6 of the soquartz modules so I can test it pretty quickly
b

booth5381

11/26/2022, 8:58 PM
Out of interest as I don’t know much about it, what’s the issue with Armbian?
j

jhrozek

11/27/2022, 9:04 AM
First it looks like I was wrong and at least SOPine is supported by some distros I care about (Fedora IoT had it as a reference platform even). But the distro choice comes down to individual preferences really. I want something that uses atomic upgrades, supports SElinux and is minimal. Even more important is first class distro support I want to be sure to be able to install XYZ even a year from now and not need to chase random images or precise kernel versions down some wikis. My first choice would have been Flatcar, second Fedora CoreOS. But - if armbian works for you then great! I’ll just wait a bit for other’s experience in the meantime.
Btw this blog post is a good example of what I want to avoid https://jamesachambers.com/pine64-soquartz-cm4-alternative-review/
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wvaske

11/27/2022, 4:51 PM
The thing to keep in mind with Pine is they release products to the community before any software exists because the community produces the software. Support get's upstreamed to mainline linux but it takes a while for it to make it to distributions.
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joesroom

11/27/2022, 9:32 PM
been using a pinebookpro for over a year. it's pretty solid
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booth5381

11/27/2022, 11:55 PM
I can see why Armbian would not be a good fit for your requirements
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one.true.beepdog

12/23/2022, 7:05 PM
I just got a pinebook pro from someone who didn't want to muck with it hard. After getting through the bootloader stuff, it's a champ. I still need to work on the actual software install, I think I did some stuff wrong. I have also wanted to get a build of PopOS working on it, that'd be ideal.
j

joesroom

12/23/2022, 7:41 PM
actually still rocking the manjaro that came with. rolling release so it stays bleeding edge and all that but it's been good.
I may have tried a couple others on SD or USB stick. can't quite remember but I do know I have not tried pop on it but that does sound neat. do they even have an arm release?
one thing to note... if yours hasn't been done yet look at installing towboot. it's a nice bootloader improvement and actually required for a couple pbp releases
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one.true.beepdog

12/23/2022, 8:55 PM
Yep that's what I got on there. Towboot made everything so much easier
https://pine64.com/product/soquartz-blade/ So I see this, which has an NVMe slot, it's possible then that the SOQUartz will work with the NVMe drives? @nsky.
j

joesroom

12/24/2022, 3:59 PM
I've been eyeing those as well. hope the answer is yes
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gmorrison

12/24/2022, 4:44 PM
I would hazard to guess that if you use tpi cm4 adapter, the pins needed for the nvme won't be there
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one.true.beepdog

12/24/2022, 6:06 PM
possibly. This thing uses the same CM mount tho
n

nsky.

12/24/2022, 7:21 PM
Testing is required
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one.true.beepdog

12/24/2022, 7:22 PM
Makes sense.
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idev

04/10/2023, 9:02 PM
Still only one pcie connection on the SOQUARTZ - the Blade just routes it to the M.2 NVMe slot, and doesn't have a miniPCie or full-size x1 slot. It should be possible to make an alternate CM4 adapter that enables the NVMe slot (for both SOQUARTZ and rpi CM4), at the expense of losing the miniPCIe, SATA, or USB3 connections (depending on the slot you use).
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_dhanos_

04/10/2023, 9:04 PM
Yes, and that was already proposed. For now there are no plans to make another adapter board designs, but this can potentially be a thing n the future
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zwang

05/08/2023, 9:20 PM
hi, question, just got 3 SOQuartz 2G, anyone know how to flash OS image to the onboard EMMC?
Does the turning pi CM4 adapter works? or I have to buy a CM4 carrier board to do that?
a

acelink.io

05/09/2023, 3:09 AM
i just bought 3 of the 4gig SoQuartz. Another comment mentioned using an adapter https://discord.com/channels/754950670175436841/754950670175436848/1103372677302992977
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julien0269

05/09/2023, 9:39 AM
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zwang

05/10/2023, 4:39 AM
Yes, I already have this, and put SOQuartz on it, but it can't boot from SD card
My SOQuartz have onboard EMMC
Is what I was meaning
k

knickish

05/19/2023, 6:24 PM
Is anyone running their tp2 with them yet?
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acelink.io

05/20/2023, 12:34 AM
I just got mine running. Able to successfully boot, ssh, and setup a single node k8s cluster. Next step is adding the other nodes in.
k

knickish

05/22/2023, 5:54 PM
very nice. maybe will give that a try then
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acelink.io

05/26/2023, 3:59 AM
I've had no luck getting k3s or microk8s cluster going on my soquartz boards. DietPi boots fine, but is missing the kernel functionality to run kubernetes. https://github.com/MichaIng/DietPi/issues/6389
Manjaro will boot, but i can't get my keyboard to connect to node1 and finish installation.
the base ubuntu arm64 image does not boot
Moving to plebian and everything is running super smooth inside of my k3s cluster!
j

joesroom

05/27/2023, 12:09 PM
oh nice... I just saw a mention of plebian on the pine64 blog. seems to be a quartz specific build
k

knickish

06/09/2023, 5:52 PM
this might be kind of a stupid question, but which orientation do you put the quartz in the adapter? can't tell which one is up lol It was indeed a dumb question, the screw holes only line up in one orientation
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julien0269

07/02/2023, 9:55 AM
For what it's worth, I've tried LXC/LXD and I can confirm IT JUST WORKS, smoothly... Setting up the cluster from scratch and ready for production took a little less than one hour (the four nodes are currently running Plebian but you can also use Manjaro ARM on any or all nodes) but it can take less than this if you use MicroCloud and Netdata (for the monitoring) which are both a one line command doing all the dirty work for you 😇
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