In this article, we will look at the Orange Pi 6 Plus and then we will go over the instructions to install Pimox on it. Pimox is a fork of Proxmox that runs on an ARM processor.

The Arm processors may be slower, but the fork of Proxmox is nearly exactly like the one for regular desktop systems. The major difference is that the QEMU Server allows you to emulate different processors and not just have the Intel/AMD-64 processor types to choose from when making a Virtual Machine (VM).

Orange Pi 6 Plus Specs

At the time of writing this article, the Orange Pi 6 Plus is the newest Single Board Computer (SBC). The board has impressive specs, which are:

• CIX CD8180/CD8160 SoC
  
  • Cortex-A720 and Cortex-A520 cores (Arm v9.2)
  • 12 Cores total
• Arm Immortalis-G720 GPU
  
  • 8K video encoding
  • Hardware accelerated ray-tracing
  • 28.8 TOPS
• Display Ports
  
  • 1X DP1.4 4K@120HZ
  • 2X TYPE-C DP
  • 1X HDMI1.4 4K@60HZ
  • 1X eDP 4K@60HZ
• 16/32/64 GB DDR5 RAM
• 8 GB eMMC flash
• 64 MB SPI-NAND Flash
• Micro SD card slot
• 2x 5G network ports
• 2x USB 3.0 C ports
• 2x USB 3.0 slot
• 2x USB 2.0 slots
• 1x M.2 KEY-E slot (for a Wi-Fi/BT chip)
• 2x M.2 KEY-M 2280 slot with PCIe 3.0 - 4 lane interface for NVMe SSD
• 1x Auxiliary headphone jack
• 2X Type-C PD 20V IN (100W)
• 40 PIN GPIO Header interface for expansion
• Lights
  
  • Power-on indicator (blue)
  • System indicator (green)
• Buttons
  
  • Power button
  • BOOT button
  • RESET button

Be aware that the SBC requires a bit of power. The USB Power Delivery (PD) needs to be 20V and 100W. I could use the 'J5 JUP2290 100W PD USB-C Super Charger' to power it, or you can get the PD from Orange Pi.

Because of the number of cores and the power of the CPU, it can get hot, so the board comes with a cooling fan.

Also, you should know that after connecting the power to the SBC, the board does not automatically start. A blue light comes on to show the power is connected, but the board does not start looking for a boot device. You need to press the Power button, as labeled in Figure 1 for the topside of the board, and Figure 2 shows the bottom-side of the board.

FIGURE 1

FIGURE 2

Be sure to use a high-quality SD card to boot from or an NVMe, which you can start with your SD card and get the Operating System (OS) going before copying it to an NVMe to boot from it.

I can go over booting the device from an SD card and copying it to an NVMe before we get to Pimox.

Orange Pi 6 Plus Operating Systems

There are a few Operating Systems that you can choose from when installing an OS on the Orange Pi 6 Plus.

• Debian
• Android
• Orange Pi OS

In the future, there should be more, but the main one that we are looking at for Pimox is Debian.

Specifically, we are looking at Debian 12 (Bookworm) since Pimox is version 8.4.10. If you need more information on Proxmox, you can look at 'Proxmox 01 - What is Proxmox-VE'.

So, to get an OS, you can look at the site here.

For Debian, there are two images you can download:

1. Debian Bookworm GNOME Desktop 6.1.44
2. Debian Bookworm GNOME Desktop 6.6.89

I seemed to have better luck with the kernel version '6.1.44' image.

Download the image and save it to a drive. Once downloaded, you need to extract the compressed image. With the extracted image, you need to use a flashing program, like Balena Etcher, to copy the image to an SD Card.

Once the flash is complete, you can insert the SD Card in the Orange Pi 6 Plus. Be sure you have a power, display, keyboard, mouse and Ethernet cable connected to the SBC.

Once you are ready, press the power button to start the boot process, and a green light should start blinking to show the boot process is starting.

It could take 20 to 30 seconds to get to a desktop screen.

Depending, the system may reboot once during the initial boot so it can resize the partition on the SD Card.

Installing Pimox

After the OS boots, which I will assume you are using Debian to get Pimox on the device, you need to open a terminal. In the terminal, you first need to perform an update:

This command should run. But it gives you an error about the trusted keys being in a legacy keyring, which is a deprecated saved state.

So, we need to fix this. The failed repository is for Docker. To update the key, we need to get the last 8 characters of the key. So, to list the keys, we use the command:

You need to find an entry for Docker, which in my system is the topmost entry on the key list, as shown in Figure 3.

FIGURE 3

The last eight digits of the key are '0EBFCD88' on my system. They may be different. So, to export the key from the legacy system, we need to run:

sudo apt-key export 0EBFCD88 | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/docker.gpg

The exported file can have any valid name with the extension 'gpg'. Just be sure it is in the proper folder.

You should now be able to repeat the update command and not get an error. After the update works, you can perform an upgrade and then remove unneeded files:

• sudo apt upgrade -y
• sudo apt autoremove -y

During the upgrade process, the system might prompt you about enabling 'iperf3'. This service is used to check bandwidth used by TCP/IP. Unless you are checking network bandwidth, Pimox does not really need the service. Make your choice to enable the service if it is required.

Next, we need the key for the repository we need to add for Pimox. The following command will download the key and place it in the folder '/etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/':

sudo curl -L https://download.lierfang.com/pxcloud/pxvirt/pveport.gpg -o /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/pveport.gpg

Once we have the key, we need to add the source for the repository:

sudo echo "deb [arch=arm64] https://download.lierfang.com/pxcloud/pxvirt bookworm main" > /etc/apt/sources.list/pxvirt.list

We can perform a repository update and see that there are no errors.

For a Pimox server, we need to have a static IP Address since we will need to access the server from a remote web browser to manage it. So, first we need to set up the local Hosts file:

Using 'nano' as our editor, you can use a different one. We can change the initial '127.0.0.1 orangepi6plus' to a new hostname if you want to switch it. For my example, I will change it to 'op-1' and have a domain name of 'linux.org'. After this line, we can add the IP Address and hostname:

127.0.0.1op-1.linux.org op-1
192.168.1.15op-1.linux.org op-1

Save the file and exit the editor.

If you want to change the hostname, we can do this with the following command:

sudo hostnamectl set-hostname op-1

We will change the IP Address in a moment. We need to install a necessary service and disable another. The service we will install is 'ifupdown2' to replace the 'NetworkManager' service, so perform the commands:

sudo apt install ifupdown2 -y
sudo systemctl disable NetworkManager
sudo systemctl stop NetworkManager[code]

We need to know the name of our network interface. For the Ethernet ports, the two names are 'eth0' and 'eth1'. Use the command 'ip a' to see which port has an IP Address, or if you are using both ports, you'll need to determine which port will be the static one. For my example, my port is 'eth1' and my static IP Address is '192.168.1.15', as I used before in the 'Hosts' file. We need to edit the 'interfaces’ file:

[code]sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

At the bottom of the file, we will add the following to set up 'eth1' with any necessary IP configuration. Change the values as you need for your network:

auto eth1
iface eth1 inet static
address 192.168.1.15
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.1.1
dns-domain linux.org
dns-nameservers 8.8.8.8 1.1.1.1

Save the file and exit the editor.

On the Orange Pi 6 Plus, we are still running the DHCP Client service. We need to disable and stop the service:

sudo systemctl disable dhcpcd
sudo systemctl stop dhcpcd

We have made a lot of changes, so we need to reboot the system and make sure everything is set:

After the system restarts, you can open a terminal again. Run the command 'ip a' and verify that the Ethernet port has the static IP Address that you set.

NOTE: Everything should be good, but if the port is DOWN and not running, then use the command 'sudo ip link set dev eth1 up' to start the Ethernet device. Use 'eth0' if you want the other port started.

We need to set the password for the 'root' user since we will log in as root from the remote web browser. Use the command to initialize a password for 'root', which will require you to enter a new password and then verify it:

Next, we need to install the Pimox services from the new repository we added. First, we need to update the repository list and then install the apps:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install proxmox-ve pve-manager qemu-server pve-cluster -y

If asked to set up a 'mailserver', you need to make your choice as needed on your system.

The system also prompts you about installing 'kexec-tools'; answer 'Yes'. The 'kexec-tools' allow the SBC to be rebooted.

After the installation is complete, there are quite a few services installed. You can see a full list with the command:

sudo systemctl list-units --type=service pve*

There are six services we need to set to autostart at boot:

sudo systemctl enable pvebanner
sudo systemctl enable pvedaemon
sudo systemctl enable pvefw-logger
sudo systemctl enable pveproxy
sudo systemctl enable pvescheduler
sudo systemctl enable pvestatd

Now, the installation of Pimox is complete. You need to reboot to initialize all the services.

Installing a Linux Bridge

Pimox needs to have a bridge set up for access by the Virtual Machines.

From a web browser, go to the static IP Address with a port number of '8006'. In my example, my address would be:

192.168.1.15:8006[code]

You should get a message about the site not being trusted. You need to click on 'Advanced' and select to go ahead.

At the login screen, use the username of 'root' and the password is the one you set for 'root'.

After the credentials are verified, you will be connected, and you’ll see a screen similar to Figure 4.

[ATTACH type="full"]30461[/ATTACH]
[B]FIGURE 4[/B]

Now, to set up the Bridge, you need to select the Node in the left pane. For my system, it is 'op-1'. In the middle pane, select 'System' and just below it is 'Network'. Once you select the 'Network' option, a button should appear above the right pane labeled 'Create'. From the drop-down list, choose 'Linux Bridge' and then a new window should appear, just like in Figure 5.

[ATTACH type="full"]30462[/ATTACH]
[B]FIGURE 5[/B]

Here, you need to fill in the entries for 'IP4/CIDR' and make sure to check 'Autostart'. The 'IP4/CIDR' option for my system is '192.168.1.16/24'. I do not have the address '192.168.1.16' assigned to any device. Keep in mind that this is the IP Address assigned to the 'Bridge' for use by the Virtual Machines and Linux Containers and must be a static IP Address.

Once you have the entries set, click on 'Create' and the Bridge should be created.

Pimox should be up and running.

A note to remember: unlike the real Proxmox, Pimox will allow the use of different CPUs when creating a VM. The following are the CPU architecture choices:
[LIST]
[*]Aarch64
[*]X86_64
[*]riscv64
[*]loongarch
[*]S390x
[*]PPC64
[/LIST]
[B]Conclusion[/B]

This may have seemed like quite a bit to get Pimox to go, but it is well worth it to see how so many things work together to get services going.

It can also be good practice to work with an SBC that is so powerful and to get such a server installed. Even if you do not want to use Pimox, the Orange Pi 6 Plus is a great SBC to work with.