NCP on a RockPro64

You are right I tried to boot without the drives connected and all seemed to work fine. I then tried to connect the SATA drives but NCP couldn’t recognize them.

Is there a way to file a feature request?

take this to the Armbian forums. I would try their latest image first

I am having the same issue with Armbian. Have not had time yet to do some research and troubleshooting. Will post here once I have more details.

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Thanks @Jeffrey_Frederick

Just wanted to add some personal data points to this thread:

I purchased a RockPro64 with the NAS enclosure and their PCIe to SATA card. After flashing the current NCP image (dated March 10, 2019) for the RockPro64, I was unable to get the board to boot with a hard drive attached to the PCIE SATA card.

With just the SATA card plugged in, and no HDD attached to it, the board would boot normally, I could access the NCP web interface and everything worked as expected. I connected a screen to the board, and on the terminal with dmesg I could see the SATA card being detected, and there were messages about the PHYs shutting down, presumably because nothing was attached to them. Attaching a hard drive (I tried several, including SSDs and HDDs) to the SATA card always resulted in the boot never completing, and instead of the normal boot messages being displayed, the screen just showed something to the effect of “Please wait, loading build ###” (I forgot to write down the exact message). I let it sit for several minutes and the boot did no proceed past this point.

I then loaded the latest (https://www.armbian.com/rockpro64/) Armbian Bionic image, and with that I was able to boot with a hard drive attached, see the SATA device, and mount it as expected. Because that worked, I then loaded the latest Armbain Stretch image, and that too booted with a hard drive attached, and I was able to mount and use the SATA device as expected.

Since the latest Armbian Stretch worked with the SATA card, I then ran the NCP install script. After it completed, I was still able to boot with a hard drive attached to the SATA card, and I got the full NCP web interface as expected, and everything, including the SATA devices, appears to be working.

So perhaps whatever was causing the problem in the RockPro64 for NCP has since been fixed in the latest Armbian? The only reason I question that is because it looked like the “latest” RockPro64 Armbian Stretch image was generated in February, which would have been before the March NCP image was created, so I would assume they’d be using the same thing under the hood? I can do some more testing of whatever would be helpful to get the NCP image for the RockPro64 working with the SATA expansion card “out of the box”, rather than having to go the Armbian Image + Install script route. Let me know, thanks!

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We’ll create a new release soon based on the latest Armbian so that should fix the issue.

Thanks for the heads up`

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@nachoparker, That’s great news! I have not had a chance to get back to my RockPro64 since I last tried it. @joshuawhitehead’s post is EXACTLY what I’ve been seeing. Sounds like the Armbian update will fix my issues.

Thanks again for your work on NextCloudPI!

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HI @joshuawhitehead, Any chance you could point me towards the NCP install script you mentioned? I’ve been trying to get setup on a Rockpro64 with the NAS case, and experienced the same issue that folks here have been discussing. Until the update is released, I’d be interested in trying your workaround. Unfortunately I’m SUPER new to this stuff (first time working with a single board computer or Linux :confused:) I think I know where to find the Armbian image and can probably get that flashed and booted, but I wasn’t sure where to go from there based on your description.

Thanks so much!

as root run:

curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nextcloud/nextcloudpi/master/install.sh | bash

Edit in addition to comments below: How to configure external this includes using nc-datadir to move NC’s datadir to the external drive.

Yep, the command @OliverV posted is what I used.

For reference, I found it on the main NCP page (https://ownyourbits.com/nextcloudpi/), the first thing under the “Supported Systems” heading where it says “Debian Stretch (all architectures)”.

To be clear, since you said you’re new to Linux, the install script itself is the install.sh file which gets downloaded from github. The command curl is a command line utility used to download files, and the vertical bar “|” or “pipe” sends the script that gets downloaded into bash, which actually runs the script.

As a heads up, be aware that the install script by default will put the entire NCP install, including your data directory, at the root of the system. So, for example, if you’re running the RockPro64 from a 32GB SD Card, that’s where your data directory will end up. I’m not of the best way of changing that. I followed some of the instructions here to move just my data directory to a couple of 4TB HDDs I had connected: HowTo: Change / Move data directory after installation That procedure is not officially supported, and may cause some issues, but it worked for me.

NCP web offers a way to move the data directory to a different drive. You DO need to ensure that the hard drives are properly mounted and configured to mount at boot time.

That sounds like a much better way of doing it- do you have a link to some documentation or anything on that feature? I didn’t see that come up when I was searching for a way to do it 6 weeks ago or so.

https://docs.nextcloudpi.com/en/how-to-configure-an-external-usb-drive-with-nextcloudpi/

Thank you all for the links! I appreciate the time spent to answer my questions!

Hopefully I’ll get to try setting it up in the next few days. :crossed_fingers:t5:

Hi, I’m happy to see that there’s a topic about NCP on a RockPro64 :slight_smile:
I plan to buy one espcially for NCP, with 2 HD (one for Nextcloud, one for backup).
Is the “plug-and-play” philosophy achived? :wink:
I don’t know yet the best way and connector (USB, SATA…) to use, any advice and/or links much appreciated :smiley:
Thanks very much!