Installing Armbian 26 on my ODROID-HC2
A brief set of instructions on installing Armbian 26 on an ODROID-HC2 machine. It includes setting up Samba and Docker + Portainer.
After nearly a decade of faithful service I was thinking about giving my aging ODROID-HC2.
Install media
The operating system I have choosen is Armbian. It has images available for the ODROID series of SBC from HardKernel. It is recommended you install the image using their own installation manager. I’m using an x64 bit Ubuntu 24.04 operating system so I selected the closest match for my setup. Your millage may vary. Look for an installation package suitable for you.
curl -L https://github.com/armbian/imager/releases/download/v1.2.8/Armbian.Imager_1.2.8_amd64.deb -o ~/Armbian.Imager_1.2.8_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i ~/Armbian.Imager_1.2.8_amd64.deb
Install the manager and use it to flash an SD card. There’s no longer a need to flash a USB stick and have that boot and install onto the SD card. It’s done directly now.
sudo dpkg -i ~/Armbian.Imager_1.2.8_amd64.deb
First boot
The first boot can be a little tricky since you are doing this headless. I log into my router / pi-hole and watch for the new machine to appear on the list of connected devices. I copy the MAC address for it into my DHCP server list of reserved addresses and assign it an IP. Next boot I can just SSH straight into it at it’s new IP address.
First though, see need to use a root shell to get some configuration changes done.
Log into the machine as root from your workstation.
ssh root@10.0.0.x
armbian-config
Armbian suggest we make a customisation for the specific device which will tune it accordingly. It’s meant to improve boot speed and lower power consumption.
» system » kernel » select odroid configuration
Select ODROID HC1/HC2.
» software » containers
Install docker and portainer for container management.
» software » DevTools
Install git and git-lfs. This will save you a little effort later on.
Make it home
After the basic installation has been completed I like to settle in as a new home owner and put some of the comforts of home onto my new machine.
Start by following the instructions provided for a Ubuntu machine. At a minimum you will want to copy over your SSH keys, run an apt update, and install your dot files.
Swapfile
Because the ODROID-HC2 only has 2GB of RAM it is highly likely it will need to use a swap file. I just followed some lazy AI instructions and allocated 8GB of swap on the root because I’m too lazy to look up any better methods. Be best!
sudo fallocate -l 8G /swapfile
sudo chmod 600 /swapfile
sudo mkswap /swapfile
sudo swapon /swapfile
echo '/swapfile none swap sw 0 0' | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
You can check if it worked.
# You should see a swapfile entry added at the end of this file.
cat /etc/fstab
# See if Linux is using the swap file.
free -m