Most people don’t do what I do on a Saturday night, but when you have no life, you got to fill up with something.
I have a few router boards. I figured I would setup a new network in my homelab. Which is crazy, because I already two. Yes, two networks that were separated by firewalls.
Network One — Main Network for the house.
Network Two — Hosted Services
I was like, ok. I got a number of Small Board Computers, let’s make the third one just for them. Why, because I know some will asking, so I can teach people Linux, I don’t have to worry about IP Address showing.
Here a rough description. New firewall using a Zima board 216 with a PCIe Network Dual Port Card (I am going to try Youyeetoo X86 to see which is better of the two), plugged into the back of firewall is Banana-Pi BPi-R3, that is the wireless for this new network.
Now, here what I been fighting with for the last month. I have another Banana-Pi router board, BPi-R2 Pro, it’s a good board, but my issue was trying to get dhcp relay working with it, getting wireless device working with either the Mini PCIe, or the M.2 A/E Key M.2, not the limitation of the board, but the OS. Yes, I have loaded so many kernel firmware, it should be running anything.
I found a cable, but make I need a better one, right now the one I have sticks way up, but it works. I can’t close the case I bought for it, but that fine for now. It works and I can see my Inland 500GB SSD.
I tired ISC DHCP Relay/DHCP Server/DNSMasq to setup a means to get host on my desk to get an ip, I want to use a switch for the boards I am working on. The problem is I didn’t set up a bridge device. I know that now, thinking deep I have to do some funking iptables for routing.
I swapped Debian, for OpenWRT, so now I can use the board as a router. Which makes me happy, but I can’t see the SSD with OpenWRT. I can see a USB Storage device. Why am I worried about the hard drive, well I want this R2 to be a NAS as well. ( Only wish I had a 4TB Drive )
Now the major issue. I need ethernet. I got wireless to work with Debian, using the new GenBasic, but I can’t use that with it OpenWRT, I need a PCIe or M.2 A/E Key that works with OpenWRT, I think the PCIe is better, a gut felling.
Anyway, what I need is Ethernet over Power. A friend gave me one, but I need a pair (Recommendation please, as I like one that is cheap and works great). That will help me finish this board and the new network.
The other thing I had to do was setup a DNS server. A Dell R620, which was using running VMWare ESXi, got rebuilt with Proxmox 8, because ESXi 7.x doesn’t work with that Dell Server (No Raid).
I am so close. Excited because it almost complete. I know, to most this is all Geek talk.
I think I have a total of five vlans now it the house. (Zach Underwood, not your level of networking but I am getting there. )
