It’s a cheap (starts at US$20 each; a nicer version with a OLED display and some other bells and whistles is $40) iKVM system based on RISC-V. Great if your NAS doesn’t include IPMI, but you still want a remote console. No affiliation at all with the seller, but I just ordered a few.
The site suggests that it also supports mounting storage remotely, but even if not I’d consider it worthwhile. Now to see if I can find a printable case for the Lite version…
TL;DNR:
I may have to investigate using a better remote console device, like the one listed above, due to issues with my existing remote serial console device.
Two weeks ago I was doing an update of my miniature PC used for both media and other misc. master copy of files, (scripts, help files, etc…). As part of the update, both OpenZFS and Dracut, (used to make initial RAM disks), were updated. So it was time to make a new InitRAM disk and add a new Grub entry for it.
Disaster struck!
Un-bootable!
Even lost my remote serial console!
Okay, a bit of hyperbola. Booting that same boot environment using the old InitRAM disk worked. So I re-created a new one, still problems and then I had serial console problems.
Eventually I figured it out and all is good. Dracut used to default to “gzip” InitRAM disk compression, but now defaults to “zstd” which my kernel build does not support. Easy fix, and warned me to be careful on my desktop & laptop upgrades.
However, during trouble shooting, I had to make at least 10 trips to my home “data center”, (unused bedroom). Something with remote power off & on, as well as BIOS access might just have made those trips un-needed.
My five-pack of NanoKVM Lites arrived today. The one I’ve pulled out of its packaging looks as expected, powers up, boots from the µSD card (not included), is able to update itself, and I’m able to log into its web UI. More once I have a chance to play with it for a bit.
It’s cheap: US$25 each, plus ~$10 shipping ($115 shipped for 5 for me, or $23 each, but it looks like the price has gone up a bit)
But this price doesn’t include the required (8 GB minimum) µSD card or cables, so add a few dollars for those
It’s tiny. Even in its printed case (I used the one at the second link I posted above), it measures about 42 x 47 x 25 mm. In the case, with all hardware and its heatsink, it weighs 32g.
Video, keyboard, mouse all work as expected
Virtual media works
But you can’t upload the image via the device’s web interface. You can send it over the network via scp (put it in /data/ on the KVM), copy it onto the µSD card (using a Linux system or something else that understands ext4), or plug the nanoKVM into another system where it’ll act as a USB drive so you can copy the image file that way. But having done that, you can have a library of ISOs on the SD card, limited only by available capacity. Kind of like Ventoy, I guess.
Tailscale is included for secure remote access, and works with custom coordination server (i.e., Headscale)
But for some reason neither the tailscale nor tailscaled binaries were executable. A quick chmod +x resolved that.
and it’s fairly straightforward to automate deployment to the NanoKVM–scp the cert and key over, then restart via SSH.
Cons:
Very bare-bones–needs the µSD card as mentioned above, and really should have some kind of enclosure (which is easy and cheap if you have a 3D printer, otherwise not so much). Wiring for power/reset control, the system power/HDD LEDs, etc., is also up to you. The “full” version includes a daughterboard that simplifies this wiring.
Similarly, no cables are included, so you’ll need to provide those on your own.
Because the µSD card isn’t included, you’ll need to flash the OS image onto your own µSD card yourself. Again, the “full” version comes with an OS image installed (according to their docs)
No display, so you’ll need to find its IP address through your router or by some other means.
Hard to get in .us–for some reason, they don’t sell to .us on their Aliexpress store. But their presale page does allow orders to .us.
It isn’t nearly as integrated into the host system as a true IPMI controller would be, so you can’t see, e.g., system power consumption, RAM configuration, or network interface details.
While the system supports HTTPS, it doesn’t support both HTTP and HTTPS–it will do one or the other, but not both (so no HTTP-to-HTTPS redirection). To do HTTPS, you’ll need to upload a cert and key, and then edit /etc/kvm/system.yaml to point to them and tell it to use HTTPS. Oh, and you need to use vi to edit it.
It seems the SSH host key is baked into the OS image, meaning that every one of these devices will use the same SSH host key. I’m not sure whether, or to what extent, this is a security concern. They can be replaced using appropriate invocations of ssh-keygen.
