Dedicated to a life of SQL Servitude

Hello again, here goes my 2nd post !!

I have been pondering something for a while now and I think here is the best place to share my pondering… (I did a quick search of the forum but did not see anything along these lines)

What if, instead of installing Maria DB or some other SQL server on a PC or NAS device, an old S9xx or S805 box was used ?

Please stop giggling for a moment and understand that my tech knowledge dates waaaaaay back to 6502’s, sta, lda, jsr and peek, poke, if-than… so go easy on me.

Here is my (pretzel ?) logic … KODI is an application running atop a jeos linux distro … CE, LE, etc Right ?
I have seen that KODI can be shutdown via SSH (in another post about remote config) leaving the base OS running. Presumably able to remain in this state indefinitely. So, are the libraries still active that KODI uses ? Python etc ? Would it be possible to install an SQL server that is configurable over SSH and effectively not ever run KODI again? (preferably stripping it out for more room)

I have tried installing one on android from the play store on an old out of date box running kit-kat and the results were, um, dismal. It sort of worked but mostly crashed. Likely having run out of resources.

My NAS devices are trusty but old and any addons have vanished as the company moved away from sparc cpus.

I do have a couple MXQ s805 running kszaq’s LE build and a couple wetek hub s905 devices I could experiment with if need be.

Any thoughts ? Flames ? Been-there-done-thats ?

That is the promise of the RPi. A low power device able to be used as a dedicated appliance. Our Amlogic devices need more mainline kernel support and all that entails before they can achieve the same level of utility. But that is not their goal, they are designed from the ground up as disposable, single purpose Android devices. That distributions such as CE exist, allowing us to gain some extra utility, is a miracle of open source.

I take a technically simpler approach and use a low power PC server, which I try to pack as much utility into as possible to justify the power requirements.

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You can do practically anything with Docker containers on top of CE.
I have Irssi and Pi-Hole docker containers running on one of my devices.

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Forgive my ignorance… How do they work ?

You can install Docker on CE, it’s installed as an addon. (search for “Docker” in addons)
After that you will need to learn a little bit about how Docker works, but it shouldn’t be too hard to find something to start with. I think I didn’t have luck with mysql dockers on ARM, but I’m sure that there are other db options you can look at.

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I am not certain that the logic of Jaaxx statement is correct.
CE is a pure version of linux with most of the needed server functionality enabled. Entware is a standard Linux package manager for embedded devices and this allow significant extensibility to the basic Linux functions built in.
Coupled to this is the fact that the general use of eMMC’s on the AMLogic boards means that the hardware is significantly more reliable than a pi which is prone to spontaneously corrupt its SD or fry it in a power outage.

When you consider also that Armbien can run on most of the AMLogic hardware and is a full featured Linux desktop with full package access to just about any Linux based software, I cannot see a viable reason to choose the pi over any of the AML SBC.

Shoog

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I have MySQL running on a KM9 Pro classic without any problems. You can install it easily from the CE Add-on menu. Primary goal was to use the same Database on a couple of other Kodi instances, with the KM9 being the “master” which also holds that data/media.

If you do not need Kodi, you can always stop the service from cli or even disable it. I use a K I as a headless tvheadend server. Installed CE with thvheadend, then stopped Kodi. This reduces idle power a little bit. If you care about power consumption disabling HDMI and USB should make a notable difference.

So basically yes, you can use CE or LE for building a “server” on AML devices, but as @Shoog suggested you should consider Armbian, which will give you access to more packages/software. That is what I am going to do with my tvheadend box as soon as there is some time…

Thank you Folks,

This is just the sort of thing I was hoping to find out :slight_smile:

I will try all of the suggestions and let you know what works best for me.