Setting up an Orange Pi 3 LTS with EKOS/INDI/KStars

[Tracy]

Hi Tracy, total Linux newbie here but I was proficient in DOS back in the day. I just received my Orange Pi 3 LTS a few days ago and I'm going to give this a try. How do we set up an Indi Server only with the client software running on a remote PC? Do you think an Orange Pi Zero 2 would handle that ?

I wouldn't personally go below the Orange Pi3 at the cost. Start KStars & INDI/EKOS on the Orange Pi, but then connect to it via a remote KStars setup. Simply running KStars on the Orange Pi isn't going to use that much resources, and the main work (captures, etc) will be on the computer running KStars and connecting remotely. It will use a slight bit of memory for KStars, but since no processing is being done via KStars, it's fairly fixed. All the plate solving and such will be on whatever computer you are using to connect to INDI/EKOS with.
The setup will be pretty much identical to what I detail above, and you only need to connect to the OrangePI long enough to start KStars and INDI/EKOS then you can disconnect.
There are some scripts out that you can start INDI/EKOS automatically without KStars, but I don't know how reliable they are since I have not used them. I simply use the process above and then connect remotely via KStars to INDI server.

 

[freddylq]

Hi Tracy, I started following your process for setting up the OrangePi 3. I get up to the process where I'm going to test the VNC connection. It appears to connect but all I see is my VNC window with a grey screen, no desktop. Same results in either Windows 10 or Linux Mint. I proceed with the rest of the process. Upon boot up I check status on the tightvncserver service and this is what I see:

× tightvncserver.service - Manage tightVNC Server
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/tightvncserver.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Sun 2023-04-02 22:25:57 UTC; 19min ago
Process: 1011 ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/tightvncserver start (code=exited, status=217/USER)
CPU: 3ms

Apr 02 22:25:52 orangepi3-lts systemd[1]: Starting Manage tightVNC Server...
Apr 02 22:25:52 orangepi3-lts systemd[1011]: tightvncserver.service: Failed to determine user credentials: No such process
Apr 02 22:25:52 orangepi3-lts systemd[1011]: tightvncserver.service: Failed at step USER spawning /usr/local/bin/tightvncserver: N>
Apr 02 22:25:57 orangepi3-lts systemd[1]: tightvncserver.service: Control process exited, code=exited, status=217/USER
Apr 02 22:25:57 orangepi3-lts systemd[1]: tightvncserver.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Apr 02 22:25:57 orangepi3-lts systemd[1]: Failed to start Manage tightVNC Server.

I tried restarting it, starting it and no go...the stop command seems to work but when I restart it or start it I get:

orangepi@orangepi3-lts:~$ sudo systemctl restart tightvncserver.service
Job for tightvncserver.service failed because the control process exited with error code.
See "systemctl status tightvncserver.service" and "journalctl -xeu tightvncserver.service" for details.

Any idea what's going on ?

 

[Tracy]

Did you set up a password when it prompted when running the vncserver :1?
If you did, it needs to be less than 8 characters long otherwise it gets truncated (i added that into the article). You can change the password to see if that's the issue by logging in as your user and then doing a vncpasswd

 

[freddylq]

Hi Tracy, no go on the password. Something I noticed when I restarted the OrangePi is that on startup I saw:

[FAILED] Failed to start Manage tightVNC Server.

I copied and pasted your instructions. I will try to redo that part of the process.

 

[Tracy]

I've got another card that I use to play with. I'll also give it a go this evening.
When you first run the vncserver :1 under the orangepi user, are you able to connect to it via a VNC client?
If the vncserver is working at that time, you should be able to connect.
I haven't gotten to the auto-start setup yet, but if you still have that file, try changing the user from vnc to orangepi in the /lib/systemd/system/tightvncserver.service.

 

[Tracy]

OK... may have figured it out... I normally add my normal user into the sudo users group by
gpasswd -a orangepi sudo.


EDIT:
Yep, seems to have worked. On the fresh install, once I added the orangepi user to the sudo group, changed the user name in the service file (forgot I had actually created a VNC user on the old install) to orangepi and rebooted it seems to work. I have added that into the instructions.

 

[freddylq]

Hi Tracy, with VNCSERVER :1 it seems that I'm able to connect but all I see is a grey screen. No desktop. I've made the new changes but still no luck. Seems that I'm still having issues with tightvncserver. services failure to load when the orangepi boots up. Will keep working on it.

 

[freddylq]

Hmm...I recreated the services file and that seems to have made it work. Now to proceed with the rest of the instructions. Thanks Tracy !

 

[Tracy]

The article Setting up an Orange Pi 3 LTS with EKOS/INDI/KStars has been updated:

Updated the need to add orangepi user to the SUDO group.

 

[Tracy]

Hmm...I recreated the services file and that seems to have made it work. Now to proceed with the rest of the instructions. Thanks Tracy !

Great. Thanks for helping troubleshooting that issue. One thing you will find is that the Pi3 takes longer on plate syncing than the RPi 4 does, and the 2GB of RAM can get full pretty quick, but for the price it is a nice solution. The new Orange Pi5 resolved much of that, but it’s getting into the RPi 4 price range when you get it WiFi capable.

 

[freddylq]

Hi Tracy, I re followed your instructions but this time using Armbian. Armbian is so much faster and everything seems to work. I'm sticking with this version.

 

[Tracy]

I'll have to give it a try... wasn't concerned with going much outside the major direct supported OS versions for the EKOS/INDI/KStars enviroment. I know that they are supported well on Debian and Ubuntu on most default ARM chipsets.
So, other than the OS change, the process worked well for the Armbian install? Since Armbian for the Orange Pi uses either Debian Bullseye or Ubuntu Jammy I would think it would be similar. The only thing with the Orange Pi operating system versions would be stuff specific to OrangePi.
I'm currently downloading the Armbian Jammy version (with Gnome) to see how it works.

 

[freddylq]

The process went well....actually I originally started with Armbian and ended up getting stuck at the same spot as I did with the OrangePi version....after we got that straightened out I went back to try with Armbian since I knew it was much quicker and it's worked so far. I've gotten as far as installing the extra catalogs.

 

[Tracy]

The process went well....actually I originally started with Armbian and ended up getting stuck at the same spot as I did with the OrangePi version....after we got that straightened out I went back to try with Armbian since I knew it was much quicker and it's worked so far. I've gotten as far as installing the extra catalogs.

Which version of Armbian did you use. My work with the Gnome version has caused issue with the VNC/X11 connection. I tried the Cinnamon desktop and have gotten a little further. I am going to try hooking up directly to a KVM solution on it and see if there is anything "quirky" that needs to be done.
The closest I've gotten so far is this with the Gnome desktop. This is all via SSH and VNC. I have NOT connected directly to the Orange Pi3 yet.

 

[freddylq]

I used the current version:

Armbian 23.02 Jammy XFCE​

So far so good on my end.

 

[Tracy]

I think the issue I'm having is trying the Gnome & Cinnamon desktops... probably going to have to drop back to the XFCE desktop image.
One issue is that auto-login is not enabled in Armbian Cinnamon/Gnone issues any longer by default and my VNC screen (on the MAC) doesn't show the password box.

 

[Tracy]

To confirm... it is an issue with the GNOME and Cinnamon desktops.
Once I utilized the Armbian XFCE Jammy image (all desktops used were based upon Jammy) I had no issues with VNC working correctly and my user being auto logged in.

 

[freddylq]

Hi Tracy. Do you know how to copy the microSD card to the eMMC and make it boot from that ? I would then keep the microSD card as a backup just in case.

 

[Tracy]

Hi Tracy. Do you know how to copy the microSD card to the eMMC and make it boot from that ? I would then keep the microSD card as a backup just in case.

I contemplated that at one point, but decided since the eMMC is only 8GB and the install (for my current instance of Armbian) is 17GB it wouldn't work. The OrangePi install of Jammy was similar. The reason my install is so large is the databases I download for the plate solving. If you didn't download the larger databases, you could probably squeeze it on there, but I like having more stars for plate solving available. I'll do some research and see what I fan find out.
You would really need to get a board that allowed you to install a large NVMe drive.

 

[freddylq]

Looks like my current Armbian install is only 7.3G without the database files installed. Maybe I can copy this install to the eMMC drive and download the database files to the uSD card ? I see there's a 994.8M zram swap file on there too.

 

[Tracy]

Maybe I can copy this install to the eMMC drive and download the database files to the uSD card ? I see there's a 994.8M zram swap file on there too.

You don't want to write anything into the swap file... the OS uses that area for when it runs out of actual physical memory.
You might be able to mount the SD card and then place them there. But at 7.3G, you are still running really close to a "full drive", which is not something you want to do in most cases.
By default, KStars/EKOS/INDI look for the database files in specific areas. You could always create a symlink and store them on the SD card in a directory.

I found some instructions on installing Linux to the eMMC on the OrangePi 3 LTS. I can't verify that it works as I haven't tried it.

 

[freddylq]

I was also thinking about removing some of the not needed packages like the Libre software and Gimp but the Synaptic Package Manager would not work even when I tried with the terminal. I get some message about having root access. I didn't understand it. Thanks for the instruction link, I'll look at it but I wouldn't do it until I slim down the install.

 

[Tracy]

I get some message about having root access.

sudo apt-get remove <package-name> and then put in your Armbian password for the user you created when prompted.

 

[freddylq]

I googled and found that. I think I'm down to 7Gb.