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

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.

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 ;).