Archive for February, 2007

The Thecus isn’t dead yet!

Published
by
Albert
on February 28, 2007
in Hardware and Thecus n2100
. 0 Comments

Wow, after many failed attempts to resurrect the Thecus, its back in action! Many thanks to:

http://onbeat.dk/thecus/index.php/N2100_Recovering_from_a_bad_config_change

Darn - still not back from the dead. I’ll have to wait for Martin to release the new image in a few weeks. At least I’ve verified that I can connect over serial again. The USB serial connector won’t work. :-(

My notes: 

ip -l 192.168.0.123
ip -h 192.168.0.1
ip -d 0.0.0.0
---
load -r initrd -b 0x00800000
load -r vmlinuz -b 0x00200000
exec -c "console=ttyS0,115200 root=/dev/ram0 initrd=0xa0800000,42M mem=128M@0xa0000000"
---
Debootstrap error: "Release file signed by unknown key"
---
debootstrap etch /target http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian

Thecus n2100 serial connection: 

Computer
HW 				Thecus
2				2
3				6
5				5
The ribbon to the thecus must have the red stripe on the upper side.

Giving up on the Thecus n2100

Published
by
Albert
on February 28, 2007
in Hardware, Kurobox and Thecus n2100
. 0 Comments

I’ve decided that the Thecus n2100 is not worth the effort. While I had fun and learned a lot in setting up Debian on it, it has consumed a lot of time. In my humble opinion, the device does not perform well enough to merit its expense as a NAS.

If I were to do it over again, I would instead choose the Buffalo Linkstation Pro, which has an aggressive price (around $170), includes a drive, outperforms the Thecus, and is smaller. The Linkstation Pro also runs Debian!

The Thecus n2100 costs $290 without a drive! Considering I just bought a notebook with 512mb of ram, a 60gb hd, and a much more powerful processor from Walmart for $108 more ($398), its ludicrious to pay that amount for the Thecus. Thankfully, my Thecus at least came with a 256MB ram chip i can re-use as well as taught me a little about serial connections.

Lingering Questions
Is there a quality NAS that has a reliable serial connection? While I’m very glad that the Thecus n2100 had a serial connection, it was really difficult to access, requiring the removal and replacement of the hard drive chassis. According to this page on adding a serial connection to the Thecus n2100, the later boards don’t even come with the pin-outs! What’s worse, I could not get a consistent read on the serial connection from the Thecus. I tried a real null modem db9 serial cable, but since it didn’t work, I ended up using simple wires to make the serial connection to the Thecus.

The Buffalo Linkstation doesn’t have a built-in standard serial pinout, nor does the NSLU2. Do any of these work with a USB2Serial adapter? Not likely.

Alternatives
Instead of a Thecus n2100, why not buy a Shuttle PC? This link to newegg.com offers a barebones for $179, plus $75 for a processor, and you’ve got yourself a MUCH more powerful machine than a Thecus n2100, for a cheaper price!

I’m actually thinking of building a high performance RAID0 NAS out of one of these. I’d get another nic card (four port would be good), ram, and a dual core processor. For a few dollars more than a Thecus, this machine would scream. Question: how much energy would this consume?

O’Reilly Book Reviews




Published
by
Albert
on February 27, 2007
in Books and Docunext
. 0 Comments

As I recently posted, I’m using O’Reilly’s Safari online library service. So far I’ve really enjoyed the easy access to high quality documentation, and am very impressed with the overall service. I’ve been slightly disappointed with a few of the books I chose though, for instance:

  • Network Troubleshooting Tools - not as advanced as I’d hoped.
  • Essential System Administration, 3rd Edition - while a great resource for some, they cover too many operating systems for my purposes. I’ll never use Solaris or AIX.
  • UNIX Power Tools, 3rd Edition - I had higher expectations for this one, and am still holding out hope that I’ll be able to garner some nuggets of wisdom from it.

The problem with the latter two items is that they take up two slots each! Ouch.
The ones I’ve really liked are:

  • Designing Large-Scale LANs
  • DNS and BIND, 5th Edition
  • Linux Server Hacks Volumes 1 and 2
  • Understanding Linux Network Internals (I own a hardcopy too)

Safari is not only a great reference tool, its also a really good “preview” tool to check out potential books to buy. I’ve made the mistake of buying a book thinking it is one thing when it is really about another, or that it is too advanced or basic for me.

Toshiba Satellite 5205-S703 Server

Published
by
Albert
on February 26, 2007
in Debian, Docunext, Hardware, Networking, Operating Systems, Puppy Linux and Ubuntu
. 0 Comments

I’m trying to setup a multi-purpose server on a Toshiba Satelite 5205-S703. I’ve been using Knoppix to investigate the possibility so far, and I’ve been amazed at how difficult the machine has been to work with. First off, there are no “usual bios”. It is a “legacy free” machine, meaning you have to use a Windows-based Toshiba tool to edit the machine information. Thanks Toshiba. Sheesh.

But, if you press F12 on startup, you can at least select from a few different options. Astoundingly, if you have removed your hard drive - the CD drive won’t work either! Luckily I had an old 2GB 2.5″ drive that is useless for anything besides a swap on a system like this.

Knoppix is a little over the top for me, so I’ve instead decided to go with Puppy Linux. The fact that the Satellite has a DVD burner in it makes it a lot cooler, so I plan to try using to keep updating a multisession Puppy Linux livecd. There are still a few kinks to work out:

  • sshd server
  • Auto-boot to CD

I found another Puppy distro called Grafpup, which plans to be a graphics distribution. On their website, they mention including mysql in a future release. I was able to get mysql working incredibly easy thanks to Apachefriends.com XAMPP install.

Installing XUbuntu on Compact Flash

The Satellite has a PCMCIA card, and I have an extra PCMCIA CF reader. In addition to that, the boot screen has an option for to boot off PCMCIA. Will it work? Only time will tell, the install is going a little slow and will finish in about a half an hour. Nope, not going to happen. I guess both Xubuntu and regular ubuntu both need more that 2GB of storage to operate.

Installing DSL on Compact Flash

While I like Puppy Linux for small installs, it can’t support apt-get very well (non-presistent /var). The alternative is Damn Small Linux (DSL), which is based off knoppix, or Bonzai. DSL seems to have more of a support communty than Bonzai, so I’m trying DSL first. Damn Small Linux has the capability of running apt-get. To install, it needs 200MB of storage - nice! It installed OK, but the Satellite refused to boot off it. Argh. One of the options when booting “install” from the DSL livecd is create a PCMCIA boot disk, so I guess it makes sense that it won’t boot directly off it.

Back to Xubuntu, now on a hard drive

I took the 20GB hard drive that used to hold Windows 2000 for my Toshiba 2805-s203 (now running Puppy) and formatted it to hold Xubuntu. Thankfully, before I wiped the drive, I was able to migrate my Windows 2000 install to a Q virtual machine. The goal here: install Puppy Linux to a DVD-R to setup a XAMPP server on it as a multisession CD. This will be a decent setup: dual boot between Puppy Linux and Xubuntu.

Reducing power consumption
When installing Xubuntu, laptop-mode-tools to reduce notebook computer energy consumption when running linux is automatically installed, along with kpowernowd. I set the governor to powersave mode, and also tweaked laptop mode tools using lm-profiler. The Pentium-M also supports power modes, so I unloaded two usb modules to enourage it to go into C3 as descriped on the ACPI for Linux pges. From my occasional inspection of the Kill-A-Watt power meter, this setup runs at an average of 19 Watts. Phenomenal!

What I’ve learned

Flash Media
Booting off USB or PCMCIA on a notebook or laptop computer is incredibly annoying. I would like to try to do the same thing with a CF2IDE adapter, but the goal there isn’t that great. Compact flash drives are very slow compared to regular old PATA and the newer SATA drives.

LiveCDs
LiveCDs are AWESOME! while CD drives are also slow and annoyingly loud, they are cheap and so are CDs.

Puppy Linux
Since Puppy Linux can load itself into a marginal amount of memory, you won’t be bothered too much by the CD reads. And since Puppy Linux can update itself via multisession writes, it is an evolutionary remastering process, and the labor put into them is retained in the configurations and easily reusable.

Knoppix
Knoppix is huge, not right for me to use very often, but turly amazing nonetheless, and a tool I absolutely want to have in my toolkit.

Damn Small Linux
I’ve had good luck with the DSL LiveCD, but I haven’t installed it on a hard drive yet, so I haven’t been able to test out its apt-get abilities.

PXE Booting
I’d like to explore the ability to run some diskless machines using PXE boot, and the Satellite might be the right machine to do that with. However, that’s a pretty serious undertaking from what I can tell at this point.

http://slim.cs.hku.hk/

http://drbl.sourceforge.net/

« Older Entries