small seedboxes: le potatos, raspis
Posted: Mon Jun 10, 2024 3:01 pm
Cheap option ($50-70 + the drive)
Le potato (get 2g ram) - $35
Heatsink - $8
USB to 2.5" sata adapter
powered usb hub
a 2.5" sata drive (SSD)
micro sd card
You can always use an external spinning hd, but seeding from an ssd is better. The power supply is micro usb so some form of external power for the drive is usually needed. I suppose you could also use a large flash drive instead.
You can choose to boot from the drive by following a guide like this https://jamesachambers.com/libre-le-pot ... oot-guide/. If you haven't used rasberry pi's or similar before it should be noted you don't want to be doing much writing to the micro sd, they wear out quickly and tend to be slow anyway. If you don't want to boot from an external drive, you can install i2p on the micro sd and change storage directory for snark. Or install i2p on the ssd directly.
Running linux headless and with i2p+, this setup should work fine for up to 1.5MB/s in either direction. If you're constantly pushing close to that speed, give it a fan. It will underclock itself to 1.2GHz once it goes past 64C. These models can also run well enough as a floodfill.
Pricier option ($110 + m.2 drive)
Raspi 5 - can be found on not amazon for around $60
NVMe to PCIe adapter
Heatsink with cooling fan (raspi 5 needs a fan)
power adapter (usb c)
m.2 drive of your choice
micro sd
Something like this https://52pi.com/products/n05-m-2-2242- ... berry-pi-5 for $40-50, has the NVME adapter, heatsink, case, power cable. So would need a micro sd and an m.2 drive.
As a higher performance option, the raspi 5's have PCIe slots and usb3. It's overkill for an i2p only seedbox alone, i think you'd have a lot of spare cpu/ram unless you're trying to do something intense like running thousands of torrents with multiple snark standalones/router instances. Although if you're looking to do this kind of thing you might as well check out mini pcs and other "off brand" options like the orange pi.
Since NVME is very fast you might as well boot from your m.2 drive and just use the micro sd to get that setup. I haven't tried this, but i'm pretty confident that when running linux headless it could comfortably handle running a router, seeding several hundred torrents (probably more) and acting as a media server. decent storage potential with the pcie and usb 3 ports. Not a bad option for an i2p router/seedbox/media server.
I'm sure you can do this with le potato as well but i think it would work better to get 2 and use one as a media server and use the other as the seedbox/nas. If you put limits in place like reduce i2p max memory usage, reduce participating tunnels etc it would probably work ok on one le potato but 2g of ram goes fast.
Other setup options
I2PD and snark standalone
With either the le potato or raspi 5 you can run i2pd and use snark standalone, since i2pd is very resource efficient. With that option you could easily run several snark standalone instances and could probably run more torrents. Another user runs a setup like this (presumably on different hardware) although i haven't tried it myself.
Router only for external client
If you've already got a standalone client setup on something else you can just use a cheap SBC like le potato to run as a 24/7 router, just need to ssh and forward your ports for that (4444 and 7654). for higher throughput potential go for something more in range of the raspi5 or an alternative, which should be able to handle load from multiple clients if you wanted to do that.
Le potato (get 2g ram) - $35
Heatsink - $8
USB to 2.5" sata adapter
powered usb hub
a 2.5" sata drive (SSD)
micro sd card
You can always use an external spinning hd, but seeding from an ssd is better. The power supply is micro usb so some form of external power for the drive is usually needed. I suppose you could also use a large flash drive instead.
You can choose to boot from the drive by following a guide like this https://jamesachambers.com/libre-le-pot ... oot-guide/. If you haven't used rasberry pi's or similar before it should be noted you don't want to be doing much writing to the micro sd, they wear out quickly and tend to be slow anyway. If you don't want to boot from an external drive, you can install i2p on the micro sd and change storage directory for snark. Or install i2p on the ssd directly.
Running linux headless and with i2p+, this setup should work fine for up to 1.5MB/s in either direction. If you're constantly pushing close to that speed, give it a fan. It will underclock itself to 1.2GHz once it goes past 64C. These models can also run well enough as a floodfill.
Pricier option ($110 + m.2 drive)
Raspi 5 - can be found on not amazon for around $60
NVMe to PCIe adapter
Heatsink with cooling fan (raspi 5 needs a fan)
power adapter (usb c)
m.2 drive of your choice
micro sd
Something like this https://52pi.com/products/n05-m-2-2242- ... berry-pi-5 for $40-50, has the NVME adapter, heatsink, case, power cable. So would need a micro sd and an m.2 drive.
As a higher performance option, the raspi 5's have PCIe slots and usb3. It's overkill for an i2p only seedbox alone, i think you'd have a lot of spare cpu/ram unless you're trying to do something intense like running thousands of torrents with multiple snark standalones/router instances. Although if you're looking to do this kind of thing you might as well check out mini pcs and other "off brand" options like the orange pi.
Since NVME is very fast you might as well boot from your m.2 drive and just use the micro sd to get that setup. I haven't tried this, but i'm pretty confident that when running linux headless it could comfortably handle running a router, seeding several hundred torrents (probably more) and acting as a media server. decent storage potential with the pcie and usb 3 ports. Not a bad option for an i2p router/seedbox/media server.
I'm sure you can do this with le potato as well but i think it would work better to get 2 and use one as a media server and use the other as the seedbox/nas. If you put limits in place like reduce i2p max memory usage, reduce participating tunnels etc it would probably work ok on one le potato but 2g of ram goes fast.
Other setup options
I2PD and snark standalone
With either the le potato or raspi 5 you can run i2pd and use snark standalone, since i2pd is very resource efficient. With that option you could easily run several snark standalone instances and could probably run more torrents. Another user runs a setup like this (presumably on different hardware) although i haven't tried it myself.
Router only for external client
If you've already got a standalone client setup on something else you can just use a cheap SBC like le potato to run as a 24/7 router, just need to ssh and forward your ports for that (4444 and 7654). for higher throughput potential go for something more in range of the raspi5 or an alternative, which should be able to handle load from multiple clients if you wanted to do that.