Espers Wallet on Orange Pi PC 2

7 min readJan 31, 2018

After having an Espers wallet on Ubuntu 16.04 for a longer time I decided to put this 24/7 wallet onto an Orange Pi PC2:

The current consumption at 5V is around 200mA (i.e., 1 W) with

armbian as operating system (Ubuntu Desktop version: ARMBIAN 5.38.180128 nightly Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS 4.14.15-sunxi64)
vncserver (no monitor connected)
lxdm as display manager
Espers wallet in version 0.8.7.2-Patch 2 Alpha (https://github.com/CryptoCoderz/Espers from 2018–01–30)
8 GB SD card

I will explain how to setup such a system as until today I could not find such an implementation. Wherever possible, I will provide links to the corresponding sub-projects as usually time will change some details.

Setup OrangePi 2 PC2 with armbian as OS

At this stage I used a 8 GB SD card flying around and installed the armbian Ubuntu Desktop version following the steps on the armbian documentation.

After bringing up the armbian system you should be able to login via ssh (I use an Ubuntu PC, if you use a Windows PC you might login using putty or something similar):

ssh -l root ip_orangepi

and create a new user. This is asked automatically after the first boot (root password is 1234.
Now, you should be able to login using the normal user using the password of the newly created user.

ssh -l user ip_of_orangepi

There should appear something like this:

user@normalpc:~$ ssh -l user 192.168.1.5
user@192.168.1.5’s password: 
 ___ ____ _ ____ ____ ____ 
 / _ \ _ __ __ _ _ __ __ _ ___ | _ \(_) | _ \ / ___|___ \ 
| | | | ‘__/ _` | ‘_ \ / _` |/ _ \ | |_) | | | |_) | | __) |
| |_| | | | (_| | | | | (_| | __/ | __/| | | __/| |___ / __/ 
 \___/|_| \__,_|_| |_|\__, |\___| |_| |_| |_| \____|_____|
 |___/Welcome to ARMBIAN 5.38.180128 nightly Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS 4.14.15-sunxi64 
System load: 0.24 0.10 0.09 Up time: 1:29 hour 
Memory usage: 65 % of 994MB IP: 192.168.1.5
CPU temp: 19°C 
Usage of /: 69% of 7.1GLast login: Wed Jan 31 14:23:13 2018 from 192.168.1.2user@orangepipc2:~$

You can see that the host computer is at 192.168.1.2 and the OrangePi at 192.168.1.5.

Setup X server settings

As I run the OrangePi without monitor I have to reconfigure some settings of the X server as it might not start without monitor connected:

user@orangepipc2:~$ cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/xorg.conf 
Section "ServerFlags"
 Option   "BlankTime"   "0"
 Option   "StandbyTime" "0"
 Option   "SuspendTime" "0"
 Option   "OffTime"     "0"
EndSectionSection "Device"
    Identifier "Configured Video Device"
    Driver "dummy"
EndSectionSection "Monitor"
    Identifier  "Configured Monitor"
    HorizSync   31.5-48.5
    VertRefresh 50-70
    Option      "DPMS" "false"
EndSectionSection "Screen"
    Identifier  "Default Screen"
    Monitor      "Configured Monitor"
    Device       "Configured Video Device"
    DefaultDepth 24
    SubSection "Display"
        Depth    24
        Modes    "1024x800"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

The dummy driver for the monitor was installed by

sudo apt install xserver-xorg-video-dummy

After this change, restart X server or the system using reboot .

I want to mention here, that I interfaced some problems to login to sessions. The main reason was, that permission rights have not been set correctly. So I did:

sudo chown user:user ~/.Xauthority
sudo chown user:user ~/.ICEauthority

Setup Displaymanger lxdm

After the successful setup of the armbian on the OrangePi we will try to setup a displaymanager on which we might login using a VNC client.

sudo apt install lxdm xfce4 lxsession lxterminal lxpanel lxde-common lxde-core

If necessary you might want to disable the nodm service:

sudo systemctl disable nodm

Now just start & stop the lxdm service for the first time (might not be necessary, though):

sudo service lxdm start
sudo service lxdm stop

Now, we are going to work with the generated config file:

user@orangepipc2:~$ cat /etc/lxdm/lxdm.conf 
[base]
...## default session or desktop used when no systemwide config
session=/usr/bin/startxfc4...

A reboot should now start the lxdm displaymanager automatically. However, this cannot be verified if no monitor is connected — so let’s setup the VNC server.

Setup VNC server on OrangePi

In order to access the lxdm displaymanager I went for using VNC. This means setup a VNC server on the OrangePi and using a VNC client on my host computer. I use Remmina from my Ubuntu host PC.

Again, login to the Orange Pi via ssh.
Install vncserver (or vnc4server) package:

sudo apt install vncserver

Run the vncserver for the first time with

vncserver :1

You will be asked to give a password. I would only use 6 symbols as I remember that too long passwords are cut. Then, kill the server again:

vncserver -kill :1

The :1 is the display number.

Now. let’s configure the settings:

user@orangepipc2:~$ cat ~/.vnc/xstartup 
#!/bin/sh# Uncomment the following two lines for normal desktop:
# unset SESSION_MANAGER
# exec /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc[ -x /etc/vnc/xstartup ] && exec /etc/vnc/xstartup
[ -r $HOME/.Xresources ] && xrdb $HOME/.Xresources
xsetroot -solid grey
vncconfig -iconic &
x-terminal-emulator -geometry 80x24+10+10 -ls -title "$VNCDESKTOP Desktop" &
x-window-manager &
lxterminal &
/usr/bin/lxsession -s LXDE &

Now, we are good to go. Start again the vncserver:

user@orangepipc2:~$ vncserver :1New 'orangepipc2:1 (user)' desktop is orangepipc2:1Starting applications specified in /home/user/.vnc/xstartup
Log file is /home/user/.vnc/orangepipc2:1.log

Now, you should be able to establish a VNC connection frrom the host PC to the OrangePi. In my case I am using Ubuntu and Remmina whioch looks like that:

A double-click connects me to the OrangePi’s displaymanager:

Generate Espers Wallet

Here, I will explain how to directly generate the Espers wallet on the OrangePi from the github sources. So mainly you can grab the information here.

sudo install git build-essential libssl-dev libdb++-dev libboost-all-dev libqrencode-dev
sudo install qt5-default qt5-qmake qtbase5-dev-tools qttools5-dev-tools

So, let’s grab the sources and put them into ~/Projects/Espers

mkdir ~/Projects
cd ~/Projects
git clone https://github.com/CryptoCoderz/Espers.git
cd Espers
mkdir build
cd build

I had an issue with the boost libraries so I added to the

~/Projects/Espers/Espers-qt.pro

two lines of code:

# Dependency library locations can be customized with:
#    BOOST_INCLUDE_PATH, BOOST_LIB_PATH, BDB_INCLUDE_PATH,
#    BDB_LIB_PATH, OPENSSL_INCLUDE_PATH and OPENSSL_LIB_PATH respectively# workaround for boost 1.58
BOOST_LIB_PATH = /usr/lib/aarch64-linux-gnu
BOOST_INCLUDE_PATH = /usr/include/boostDEFINES += BOOST_VARIANT_USE_RELAXED_GET_BY_DEFAULTOBJECTS_DIR = build

After performing

qmake ..

in the build directory, this should successfully create the Makefile in the build folder.
Nevertheless, I had some linker issues with the boost libraries, so I adapted the Makefile such that:

head -n 60 ~/Projects/Espers/build/Makefile 
#############################################################################
# Makefile for building: Espers-qt
# Generated by qmake (3.0) (Qt 5.5.1)
# Project:  ../Espers-qt.pro
# Template: app
# Command: /usr/lib/aarch64-linux-gnu/qt5/bin/qmake -o Makefile ../Espers-qt.pro
#############################################################################MAKEFILE      = Makefile...
LIBS          = $(SUBLIBS) -lminiupnpc /home/user/Projects/Espers/src/leveldb/libleveldb.a /home/user/Projects/Espers/src/leveldb/libmemenv.a -L/usr/lib/aarch64-linux-gnu/ -lssl -lcrypto -ldb_cxx -lboost_system -lboost_filesystem -lboost_program_options -lboost_thread -lrt -ldl -lQt5Widgets -lQt5Gui -lQt5Network -lQt5Core -lpthread -lGL 
AR            = ar cqs
RANLIB        = 
SED           = sed
STRIP         = strip####### Output directoryOBJECTS_DIR   = build/
...

Now, let’s actually build the wallet with

make -j 1

The -j 1 was important. Although the H5 ARM has 4 cores, the memory is limited to 1GByte of RAM and some swap memory. So, generating one step at a time is a good idea.

From the make command (takes some time) should generate a Espers-qt executable:

ls -la ~/Projects/Espers/build/
total 21132
drwxrwxr-x 3 user user    12288 Jan 30 22:25 .
drwxrwxr-x 8 user user     4096 Jan 30 22:01 ..
drwxrwxr-x 2 user user    12288 Jan 30 21:13 build
-rwxrwxr-x 1 user user  9121992 Jan 30 22:25 Espers-qt
-rw-rw-r-- 1 user user   201250 Jan 30 22:25 Makefile
-rw-rw-r-- 1 user user 12276622 Jan 30 21:08 qrc_bitcoin.cpp

This is the file to be launched in the displaymanager.

Memory issues during building

If you, nevertheless, encounter memory issues you might generate some more swap memory directly on the SD card. This is usually not a good idea, but just for building it seems okay to me. I created swap files as followed (the information I got from here):

dd if=/dev/zero of=/var/my_swap bs=1024 count=1048576

creates a 1 GByte file filled with of zeros.

mkswap -f /var/my_swapswapon /var/my_swap

are activating the file.

When you are done with building, perform

swapoff /var/my_swaprm /var/my_swap

to deactivate the swap and delete the file.

Test the Espers wallet

Open your VNC client and connect to the OrangePi. Use the file manager to navigate to you build folder:

Open the Espers-qt by double clicking on it.

Wait a bit and the wallet should appear:

Here we go…

Sync wallets (host → OrangePi)

In case you want to sync your old wallet to the new one on the OrangePi: Just copy all the data in the ~/.ESP folder from the host to the OrangePi (Wallet should be stopped on the OrangePi). I used ssh copy (scp) for that purpose. On the host comüuter, apply the following command to copy everything (including files and folders):

scp -r ~/.ESP/* user@192.168.1.5:/home/user/.ESP/

That should be it. Restart the wallet and look for sync.

I’m open for any questions, comments and better proposals.