Banana Pi Pro Home Media Server Installer + Image

The Banana Pi and Banana Pi Pro by LeMaker are alternatives to the Raspberry Pi for a  NAS home media server solution. Powered with SATA and gigabit, it has significant network throughput improvements compared to the Raspberry Pi and Pi 2 (see benchmarks). I decided to make my new HTPC Media Server Installer compatible with the Banana Pi so setting up your own media server is much easier. This image is based on Igor's build scripts, Armbian and microserver installer which greatly simplified the process of creating the HTPC Installer distro.

The current kernel version in this distro is 3.19.7 running Debian Wheezy because it has modular port multiplier support. The image hosted here does not support DVB tuners out of the box but it is being looked into.

Available Images

Wheezy with 3.19 Kernel – has SATA PMP support

Recommended: Jessie with Kernel 4.1.6 – with and without SATA PMP support

New: Jessie with Kernel 4.2.6 with SATA PMP support

When you are done customizing your image, resize and back up your image to save you time in case you ever make a mistake.

Pi Unit
Processor
RAM
RAM Bus
Network
WiFi
USB
SATA
Cost
Raspberry Pi 3
1.2 GHz ARMv8
Quad Core
1 GB DDR2
450 MHz
100 Mbit
Yes
4
No
$35
Raspberry Pi 2
900 MHz ARMv7
Quad Core
1 GB DDR2
450 MHz
100 Mbit
No
4
No
$35.00
Raspberry Pi
700 MHz ARMv6
Single Core
512 MB SDRAM
400 MHz
100 Mbit
No
4
No
$25
Banana Pi
1 GHz ARMv7
Dual Core
1 GB DDR3
432 MHz
Gigabit
No
2
Yes
$36.99
Banana Pi Pro
1 GHz ARMv7
Dual Core
1 GB DDR3
432 MHz
Gigabit
Yes
2
Yes
$45.00

Banana Pi Pro Home Media Server Installer

One of the best things about the Banana Pi is the ability to use a SATA port multiplier to connect multiple hard drives. For the 4 SATA hard drive BanaNAS home media server, I am using the JMB 321 port multiplier available on AliExpress which costs $29.00 including shipping.


I found this 4 x 2.5″ bay ($30) which allows you to put 4 2.5″ hard drives into a single 5.25″ bay and a molex to DC power adapter to power the 4 hard drives in the bay. Now I won't be using multiple external USB drives which each take up their own power socket.

 

This is a visual diagram of the Banana Pi Media Server with multiple SATA hard drives

banana pi media server nas port multiplier diagram

The installer will be expanded to include x86 and x64 Ubuntu and Debian systems in the future, forks will not be necessary as development will be maintained by me as a school project.

The HTPC Guides Installer includes most of the goodies in the table below.

The installed services work well with UsenetServer and Astraweb for usenet. If you want to know more about usenet read this article.

Torrent users, be safe with Private Internet Access for secure torrenting.

Software
Purpose
Credentials
Login/Password
Port
Plex Media Server
Streaming your media collection
none
32400
NZBGet
Usenet Downloader
nzbget:tegbzn6789
6789
Sabnzbd
Usenet Downloader
none
8080
Transmission
BitTorrent Client
transmission:transmission
9091
SickRage
Periodic Show Assistant
none
8081
CouchPotato
Feature Length Video Assistant
none
5050
Mylar
Comic finder
none
8090
Headphones
Audo file finder
none
8181
Sonarr
Periodic Show Assistant
none
8989
Jackett
Add custom torrents
none
9117
HTPC Manager
Managing Services
none
8085
vsftpd
FTP Server
pi/htpcguides
21
SAMBA
Sharing files over network
pi/htpcguides
none
NFS
Sharing files
pi/htpcguides
none
Webmin
Administer server
pi/htpcguides
10000
nginx
Reverse Proxy
none
80

Install HTPC Guides Media Server Installer

There are two options, clone the installer from github yourself onto your existing Banana Pi operating system SD card installation. It is designed to be used on a fresh system and Debian Wheezy and Jessie along with Ubuntu 14.04 and latter. The second option is to download the prepared image at the bottom of this post which has the installer preloaded for your convenience. The login credentials are root/htpcguides and pi/htpguides, for security reasons follow the initial setup guide to reset your SSH keys and password.

Install git or you can't grab easily update the repository when I add new features

sudo apt-get install git -y

Git clone the latest HTPC Guides Media Server Installer

sudo git clone https://github.com/blindpet/MediaServerInstaller /root/HTPCGuides

Using the Banana Pi Media Server Installer Image

Flash the image found at the bottom of this post, the default SSH username is root/htpcguides. The root file system is automatically expanded and SSH keys are regenerated so you can feel secure. You will be forced to change this password upon the first boot and you cannot change it to the original password htpcguides.

You are required to change your password immediately (root enforced)

 ____                                  ____ ___
| __ )  __ _ _ __   __ _ _ __   __ _  |  _ \_ _|
|  _ \ / _` | '_ \ / _` | '_ \ / _` | | |_) | |
| |_) | (_| | | | | (_| | | | | (_| | |  __/| |
|____/ \__,_|_| |_|\__,_|_| |_|\__,_| |_|  |___|


Changing password for root.

I recommend creating a user to run services as, replace pi with whatever you want.

adduser pi

Add the user to your sudo group if you don't want to use the root account

usermod -a -G sudo pi

Reconfigure keyboard layout

sudo dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration
sudo service keyboard-setup restart

If you want to enable your SATA Port multipler open this

nano /etc/modprobe.d/ahci-sunxi.conf

Add this line

options ahci-sunxi enable_pmp=1

Save and exit with Ctrl+X, Y and Enter

Disable ramlog

service ramlog stop
service ramlog disable

You can choose to reboot if you like, it does work without rebooting

reboot

Running the HTPC Guides Installer

To get the IP of your headless server, log in to your router and check the DHCP table and look for the Banana Pi entry.

Make sure you are root

sudo -i

Enter the HTPC Guides installer

cd /root/HTPCGuides

Make sure the HTPC Guides installer is up to date

git pull

Execute the installer

sudo bash install.sh

Some required components will be installed, then you will be shown the installer menu.

Choose the item you want installed by pushing the Space bar key.

Only install one program at a time.

Then click Tab to get to the Install button and press Enter.

HTPC Guides installer Main screen

For each program you will be prompted for the user to run the program as, this must be a user that exists or the installer will exit. You should make sure the user has permissions for the directory you will be storing your media files.

For Ubooquity you must exit root mode if you typed sudo i earlier

exit

Ubooquity is having trouble autostarting on boot for now so I would recommend following the manual guide (the Raspberry Pi versions for now).

Here is the HTPC Guides Banana Pi Media Server Installer Image, if you can't see the social locker below you need to turn off Adblock ;).