On Sat, Feb 29, 2020 at 10:17 AM Daniel Frey <djqf...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Yes, I'm aware linux does VLANs... I set up netifrc to do this (I > already have some "smart" switches set up - not full layer 3.) I thought > about running containers but if I ever have to do something like > emergency maintenance on my server the whole LAN would be down. Seems > like a no-brainer to have a tiny device like an RPi to do this.
Yup. It really depends on your requirements. My main LAN uses a Pi as a DHCP+DNS server, for exactly this reason. I don't want to be replacing a hard drive in my server and now my lights/TV/whatever don't work. OpenHab runs on a Pi for this reason as well. On the other hand, for my other VLANs DHCP+DNS is handled by stuff like my UniFi gateway or other embedded solutions. These don't have the same requirements as my main LAN and being mostly self-contained a more consumer-oriented solution is fine. I don't want to be doing security updates on a bazillion Pis either. I use VLAN on Linux more for providing services on the VLANs. Not that I have much of this. Don't think I'm running some kind of datacenter. I just have a typical home LAN, and I'm running AREDN which basically needs two more VLANs of its own (one for the network it serves, and one for backhaul to the internet for tunnels/etc - don't want that stuff getting into my LAN and the IP address space conflicts in any case). I could see adding an IOT VLAN maybe, but the problem is that so much of that stuff needs to interact. If I stuck my TVs/Chromecasts/etc on a separate VLAN, then I couldn't cast to them from my phone or anything else unless it was on that VLAN too. > I'm not so sure I'll try installing Gentoo on it though, it doesn't > really seem suitable for compiling tasks. I'm pretty sure the kit I > ordered has a card with Raspbian on it, I'll check that out first. I run Raspbian on my Pis for this reason. If I had some niche use where Gentoo added value I'd go with it, but otherwise it just seems too painful. As it is I have to compile kernel modules on my RockPro64 boards and that takes forever even without having to build the actual kernel. When I've built kernels on those while troubleshooting issues with PCIe it would literally take an hour or more. If you do want to run Gentoo on a Pi you really should be cross-compiling it. Something like Gentoo Reference Platform on steroids would certainly be nice for ARM. -- Rich
