Couple of questions about Bubba

Clive · Post by **Clive** » 07 Mar 2007, 07:29

Hi,

Just recently heard about the Bubba and it looks like an amazing bit of kit ! I have been looking for something like this for years and never realised such a thing existed.

I have a couple of questions before I start counting my pennies -

Speed - By using the reduced speed/power ARM processor, is this very noticible to the user ? I intend to use it as a small webserver, no major traffic, just sharing photo albums to friends and relatives as well as a media server for various wireless devices around my flat. I am just interested if the reduced spec of processor is noticiable in average day-to-day use ?

Mounting - I would intend to mount Bubba vertically against a flat wall in my closet, would this cause any problems with over-heating ?

One future suggestion for a future product would be a combined Bubba / Wireless router, I intend to use Bubba as the 'front door' for my home network left on all the time with wireless devices connecting as needed. By using bubba as the main storage I can reduce the spec of the client PC's (no more need for each machine to have large hard-drives) or to have my big old server noisily running for 24/7.

Bubba has alot of potential, hope it takes off !

msx · Post by **msx** » 07 Mar 2007, 11:16

Hi, these below are my experiences and could be different for other users..

Speed - By using the reduced speed/power ARM processor, is this very noticible to the user ? I intend to use it as a small webserver, no major traffic, just sharing photo albums to friends and relatives as well as a media server for various wireless devices around my flat. I am just interested if the reduced spec of processor is noticiable in average day-to-day use ?

For the uses you reported, i found it's fast enought. I just made a backup the other day of a phpBB forum i admin, with more than 20000 post, and it run very smooth. Some other users here run photo galleries on it, i think you can find some links on the forum to see first hand.

As a file server it works good, the only thing i notices is that it takes some time when you browse a folder that have lots of file (thousands). For example in an mp3 collection.

Mounting - I would intend to mount Bubba vertically against a flat wall in my closet, would this cause any problems with over-heating ?

Well i noticed that bubba generate very little heat even in heavy use. Anyway i think it's always better not to block the air holes. Other than that, you can mount it vertically with no problem.

spoodie · Post by **spoodie** » 07 Mar 2007, 11:23

I've found the speed of my Bubba to be perfectly acceptable considering how modest the CPU is. When I've been dumping files to it I've noticed a short delay in response to the web interface or SSH logins but not to the point of annoyance.

As for built in wifi, I'm not expert but I understand that is is likely to cause the box to draw significantly more power and produce more heat, which is undesirable for me.

Post by **johannes** » 07 Mar 2007, 14:47

Hi Clive,

I can only agree to the previous posts (thanks msx and spoodie for the nice words about our product). It's of course hard to say anything about the speed since it is up to each user, but most users find it acceptable, and if you ask me, it really is enough for those services.

Regarding wall mounting and over-heating, it shouldn't be a problem. There is a quite good margin between it's normal free-air temperature and the disks maximum recommended temperature. If you worry, it is possible to check and log the internal temperature (disks have built-in sensors). Just make sure not to cover the breather holes.

Clive · Post by **Clive** » 08 Mar 2007, 07:17

Hi Guys,

Thanks for this ! Good information, I will now wait for the next pay-day and hopefully I can then join the club

Hallin · Post by **Hallin** » 10 Mar 2007, 11:22

And how about VPN? I'm planning to buy a Bubba, but I'll need to set up a VPN tunnel for access at work. Will this run smooth?

Post by **tor** » 11 Mar 2007, 09:44

Hi Hallin,

Regarding VPN i think we need to know more on what you want to do? And how you are planning on using this tunnel.

Reaching your Bubba via VPN should not be a problem as long as you don't plan on running the VPN client on Bubba it self.

/Tor

Hallin · Post by **Hallin** » 11 Mar 2007, 09:58

Maybe I was a bit unclear in my formulation.

My question was if it is possible to run the VPN-client (preferrably OpenVPN) on Bubba itself, or is the resources just too limited?

/K

Post by **tor** » 12 Mar 2007, 04:36

Regarding running a VPN-client on Bubba we have no experience of that. But a qualified guess is that you would have comparable performance to doing the same with ssh.

Bubba indeed do work over ssh. But a conciderable amount of CPU is used for crypto which do degrade throughput for things like filetransfers etc. Performance should however be sufficient for most needs.

/Tor

bjorn · Post by **bjorn** » 12 Mar 2007, 09:15

you can benchmark performance of ciphers with the command: "openssl speed aes rc4 des" and so on.
Don't expect much performance though, around 1mb/sec with AES.

And running with that speed the CPU has very little time over to do anything else.

although my bubba did perform around 8mb/sec with rc4! (which isn't really strong encryption, but maybe that's not desireable...)

But i believe that you'd need tun/tap devices and perhaps even bridge-stuff in the kernel, and if they're not included, you'd need to compile a new kernel, or atleast the kernel modules. But i don't think the stock kernel in bubba have module-support.

/Bjorn

Post by **tor** » 13 Mar 2007, 03:06

bjorn wrote:But i believe that you'd need tun/tap devices and perhaps even bridge-stuff in the kernel, and if they're not included, you'd need to compile a new kernel, or atleast the kernel modules. But i don't think the stock kernel in bubba have module-support.

Of course do we have module support. We are atm also looking in to how we most easily can provide instructions on kernel recompilation for Bubba.

The only problem is that replacing the kernel is somewhat of a risk. This since if the operation fails you end up with a non booting unit that require quite a few steps to get back into shape. But adding modules should be no problems.

/Tor

bjorn · Post by **bjorn** » 13 Mar 2007, 04:30

Ah, my mistake!