LibreELEC

One of the best systems for a handling media is LibreELEC. It’s both a Kodi box and a server appliance that’s resistant to abuse. With the right hardware (like a ROCKPro64 or Waveshare) it also makes an excellent portable server for traveling.

Deployment

Download an image from https://libreelec.tv/downloads and flash as directed. Enable SSH during the initial setup.

Storage

RAID is a useful feature but only BTRFS works directly. This is fine, but with a little extra work you can add MergerFS, a popular option for combining disks.

BTRFS

Create the RAID set on another PC. If your disks are of different sizes you can use the ‘single’ profile, but leave the metadata mirrored.

sudo mkfs.btrfs -f -L pool -d single -m raid1 /dev/sda /dev/sdb /dev/etc...

After attaching to LibreELEC, the array will be automatically mounted at /media/pool based on label pool you specified above.

MergerFS

This is a good option if you just want to combine disks and unlike most other RAID technologies, if you loose a disk the rest will keep going. Many people combine this with SnapRAID for off-line parity.

But it’s a bit more work.

• Setup MergerFS

Cooling

You may want to manage the fan. The RockPro64 has a PWM fan header and LibreELEC loads the pwm_fan module.

• Setup Fan Control

Kodi Manual Start

The kodi process can use a significant amount of CPU even at rest. If you’re using this primarily as a file server you can disable kodi from starting automatically.

cp /usr/lib/systemd/system/kodi.service /storage/.config/system.d/kodi-alt.service
systemctl mask kodi

To start kodi, you can enter systemctl start kodi-alt

Remotes

Plug in a cheap Fm4 style remote and it ‘just works’ with kodi. But if you want to customize some remote buttons, say to start kodi manually, you still can.

• Setup Remote Control

Enable SMB

To share your media, simply copy the sample file, remove all the preconfigured shares (unless you want them), and add one for your storage pool. Then just enable Samba and reboot (so the file is picked up)

cp /storage/.config/samba.conf.sample /storage/.config/samba.conf
vi /storage/.config/samba.conf

[media]
  path = /storage/pool
  available = yes
  browseable = yes
  public = yes
  writeable = yes

Config --> LibreELEC --> Services --> Enable Samba

Enable HotSpot

Config --> LibreELEC --> Network --> Wireless Networks

Enable Active and Wireless Access Point and it just works!

Enable Docker

This is a good way handle things like Jellyfin or Plex if you must. In the GUI, go to add-ons, search for the items below and install.

• docker
• LinuxServer.io
• Docker Image Updater

Then you must make sure the docker starts starts after the storage is up or the containers will see an empty folder instead of a mounted one.

vi /storage/.config/system.d/service.system.docker.service

[Unit]
...
...
After=network.target storage-pool.mount

If that fails, you can also tell docker to wait a bit

ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/sleep 120

Remote Management

You may be called upon to look at something remotely. Sadly, there’s no remote access to the GUI but you can use things like autossh to create a persistent remote tunnel, or wireguard to create a VPN connection. Wireguard is usually better.

• AutoSSH
• Wireguard