Companion Satellite on Rock Pi S

The Raxda Rock Pi S works great as a Companion Satellite host. It fits a USB host port and PoE capability into a very small shape.

CREATING a Companion Satellite microSD Card for Rock Pi S

1. Download Armbian Bookworm Minimal from https://www.armbian.com/rockpi-s/

2. Flash it to a microSD card using an etcher app like balenaEtcher. An 8GB card works fine. Arabian recommends A1 rated microSD cards.

3. Insert the microSD card into the Rock Pi S. Power it by either USB-C or PoE Hat.

4. Connect the Rock Pi S Ethernet to a network with internet access.

5. If there is a blue flashing LED, the Rock Pi is probably working correctly.

In macOS Terminal:

1. Enter this command

   • SSH -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null root@rockpi-s

2. Provide the Armbian default password

   • 1234

3. When prompted, set a new root password. Take note of the displayed IP address.

4. When prompted, make a new user. It doesn’t matter as Satellite is installed via root.

5. When prompted, accept the recommended user language.

6. If prompted, Skip generating other locales

7. Run these commands to make more swap space

   • fallocate -l 4G /swapfile && chmod 600 /swapfile && mkswap /swapfile && swapon /swapfile

   • mount -o remount,size=2G /tmp/

8. Run the Satellite install script

   • curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bitfocus/companion-satellite/main/pi-image/install.sh | bash

9. Install a specific Satellite version

   • sudo satellite-update

10. When prompted, select version you want (probably latest stable or latest beta)

11. Teminal should report “config ok” and then “Update is complete”

12. In a browser, navigate to http://[IP of Rock Pi]:9999

13. That’s Companion Satellite!