The SM Linux Drive Image project

Enverex

Erm, I can't find the post where Prof mentioned doing this so I'm going to have to start a new thread.

Ok, what is the minimum spec of machine that I'm going to be building this for? (higher spec = more optimisations).

Also anything else anyone wants to note about it for me to add/put in, etc?

the_technocrat

Enverex wrote:

Erm, I can't find the post where Prof mentioned doing this so I'm going to have to start a new thread.

Ok, what is the minimum spec of machine that I'm going to be building this for? (higher spec = more optimisations).

Also anything else anyone wants to note about it for me to add/put in, etc?

Maybe it's a good idea to talk about our goals here?

Are we:

modifying a distro of damn small linux, puppy linux or something else for a USB thumbdrive, and having it ask for the FAH username on first boot? (team 93 hard-coded? :P )

sending out a .zip or .tar of files where people can add their own client.cfg and make an .iso/LiveCD for themselves that just boots and starts folding?

modifying a full-on installation of Linux, like Ubuntu, and re-packaging it with FAH installed?

My vote would be for a tiny distro of linux on a thumbdrive, where it would run the FAHConsole in configonly mode when it boots the first time to make the user's client.cfg. Ideally, it would be cool if from then on, the machine would boot from the USB thumbdrive into console mode and just start folding, showing the FAH log on the console as it went along. There would probably have to be some modifications so the log file wouldn't max out the thumbdrive's avalable space over time.

I like this idea over a LiveCD, because you'd be able to recover half-completed work, and better than a full install, because all you would need is a board that can boot from USB (pretty common) a processor, memory and a power supply.

As a side note, we might want to have something where sopeone could 'press 1 at any time to reconfigure client.cfg' or something when they machine first boots...gives the user 5 seconds or so to change their settings?

Just my ideas...I took some linux classes on redhat a few years ago, but haven't done anything since. If I had enough time, I might be able to help set something like this up...

Enverex

What I was doing at Prof's suggestion was making a small installation of Linux cut down so that it only contains what is needed to keep itself running and run F@H to be imaged on the HD of any new SM machines.

the_technocrat

Enverex wrote:

What I was doing at Prof's suggestion was making a small installation of Linux cut down so that it only contains what is needed to keep itself running and run F@H to be imaged on the HD of any new SM machines.

Cool, and useful! I'm sure that many people who have 24/7 machines might be interested also...including myself!

Maybe a solution that allows for a cheap SMx machine would also be attractive to people looking to build their own cheap 24/7 machines?

Enverex

Well the image should run on any hardware that is a 686 (Pentium 2, Athlon) and above although it will be set up to work from IDE rather than SCSI by default. Just trying to see what lowest spec machine people are expecting so I can optimise effectively...

the_technocrat

Enverex wrote:

Well the image should run on any hardware that is a 686 (Pentium 2, Athlon) and above although it will be set up to work from IDE rather than SCSI by default. Just trying to see what lowest spec machine people are expecting so I can optimise effectively...

Hmm, ok. Well, I know the SMx project has some minimum specs that they'll accept for SMx machines, so that might be a good place to start...?

From here:

Minimum specifications for donated parts:
CPU - 2GHz or greater
MB - Supporting 1.6GHz or greater CPU
RAM - 128MB PC2100
PSU - Not needed at this time
HD - 4GB, ATA or SATA
NIC - 10/100 (PCI Preferred)
Video - Not needed at this time
CD-ROM - Whatever works
Floppy - Not needed at this time

These spec's might be a good 'cut-off' point for anyone hoping to have a 24/7 folding machine too... It's kinda the lower-end where the cost of electricity justifies the amount of work being done...

Enverex

hmm, because of the different arches I'll just make the distro for "i686" (there is no generic i786 in things for some reason, only processor specific which would make it too specific). Just building everything now.

primesuspect

One important thing I can think of is having a samba share set up automatically so that people can monitor the machine with EMIII.

the_technocrat

primesuspect wrote:

One important thing I can think of is having a samba share set up automatically so that people can monitor the machine with EMIII.

ah, good one. Maybe even have php/apache installed, and have a web page that pulls data from the unitinfo.txt?

Enverex

primesuspect wrote:

One important thing I can think of is having a samba share set up automatically so that people can monitor the machine with EMIII.

Easily done.

the_technocrat wrote:

ah, good one. Maybe even have php/apache installed, and have a web page that pulls data from the unitinfo.txt?

Hmm, that's another 12MB in total for PHP and Apache so that's nothing huge, I'm just concerned about it being unnecessary RAM usage (having Apache running)... but we'll see when I'm done setting up the base system.

profdlp

Enverex, this is awesome. I don't have the Linux know-how to be much help, but will do anything else I can to assist you.

Would this be small enough to fit on one cdrom? It would be nice to include a cd with the image in case things got hoarked down the road. If it was bootable and had an easy menu to start the image and resize the partition(s) on the hard drive once it was done that would be great.

You'll be famous for this, Enverex.

Enverex

Erm, doubtful that it will fit on a CD. DVD if I compress it maybe, but not a CD (it's going to be a few gig, I'm tempted to try some other method of doing this but if I do then I'm going to have to figure out entirely how one of the tiny Linux installations work and go from there, also exponentially increases the chances of something going wrong, but we'll see). I'll look at some other base installs now (it's 1.5GB at the moment, minus Samba and Apache).

the_technocrat

I'm trying to see if I can get FAH running off of a linux mini-distro on an old 128MB thumbdrive I had lying around. I'll share my findings if it works!

Enverex

It should work easily doing that, even running it from Knoppix or whatever should also be easy. I'm just making something to be imaged onto drives for now though.

the_technocrat

hmm, having mysql would allow for a non-liveCD to record historical production and display via php/apache...

What distro are you using? It sounds massive!

Enverex

I'm using Gentoo and I've managed to get it down to around 600MB with PHP, Apache, Samba and all other basic system tools. I did look into DSL but I didn't realise it's not "really" a distrobution of Linux, it's just a LiveCD, hell, the LiveCD folder on it is still named Knoppix(!!). I also looked into some others but to be honest this worked out the most simple.

Enverex

Ok, it's getting close to being completed now, only problem is I don't have any IDE drives left anymore to test this with (or any free drives at all) so I'm going to have to try some other things first. A few minor edits will need to be done after imaging the drive such as changing a few names (simply because of the SMX number) but I'm documenting those currently (there is only like 3 things that takes about 20 seconds in total). Only thing that I'm trying to work a way around at the moment is some way of getting grub to work universally regardless what type of drive it's put on...

QCH

Thank you, Enverex, for all the work!!!

Leonardo

Enverex, this is awesome.

Indeed.

Enverex

Just remembered my Ghetto media PC was running Gentoo aswell on an old (OLD) 4GB drive, so I've put that in my PC and packaged its contents up in a gzip file so I can use this drive to work on (easier than doing everything hypothetically). Also means I can test it in a few machines. Only thing I can't test is how grub reacts to being imaged to different drives or different interfaces but I'll check that out. I'll also whip up some sort of page on apache that it runs to show the progress. What sort of thing were people looking for? Something basic (like the unitinfo.txt file) or something much prettier?

Enverex

Huzzah. Copied it all onto my Ghetto drive, booted it and it works happily. It has every driver for SCSI, SATA and ATA loaded in so it should be able to boot off anything the current latest .17 Linux kernel supports (I managed to get around boot names being different by not specifying a root in the kernel boot line which just means it assumes it's booting off root and fstab works by going from the drive's name via a nifty new UDEV feature). So it boots happily, loads Samba, Apache and SSH (and F@H after it's configured).

So with everything loaded (minus F@H obviously) and the boot being completed, it uses a whopping 13MB RAM. The entire OS footprint (minus Portage tree which can be replaced with a single command) is roughly 750MB.

Well I'm quite chuffed

primesuspect

Excellent work... At what point do you want to try a beta test? I've got lots of junk computers laying around, in varying configurations, that I can use to test stuff out.

Enverex

I'm just trying to figure out the best way of imaging and "un"imaging the drive at the moment. Got any ideas?

Also, is the SM server fast? I'm going to need somewhere to put this so you or anyone else that needs it can get it (hopefully will compress very well so shouldn't be more than a few hundred meg, although that's still quite a size).

primesuspect

Yes, the server can definitely handle it.

I don't have any ideas about the imaging aspect of it

Enverex

Who handles the SM hard-drives? Does that person have a distrobution of Linux installed anywhere? I know imaging and unimaging can be done easily with 'dd' but that requires Linux. I'm still trying to get around to a method Thrax has suggested but I need to arse about with Windows first to try that out.

Oh, I didn't mention it before but in addition to all the drive controllers that the kernel supports, I've also put in support for every 10/100/1000/10000 Ethernet controller the kernel supports. Does anyone think it's worth it putting Token Link controler drivers in too?

Garg

This sounds really cool, good work Enverex! Could we maybe use this to set up SMx rigs without people whipping out their Windows "Corporate" CDs?

the_technocrat

Gargoyle wrote:

This sounds really cool, good work Enverex! Could we maybe use this to set up SMx rigs without people whipping out their Windows "Corporate" CDs?

If the SMx project needs some legit copies of XP Pro, I'm good for it. Just give the word.

primesuspect

There's no reason at all the SMx machines need to be running windows XP. That's just more overhead that F@H can't use

By the time enverex is finished, I think we may perhaps have an "official" SMx build of linux that will work for every SMx machine

Enverex

the_technocrat wrote:

If the SMx project needs some legit copies of XP Pro, I'm good for it. Just give the word.

/me throws the image in the bin.

the_technocrat

primesuspect wrote:

There's no reason at all the SMx machines need to be running windows XP. That's just more overhead that F@H can't use

By the time enverex is finished, I think we may perhaps have an "official" SMx build of linux that will work for every SMx machine

s'coo!

Kwitko

I want this for SM4. It's hard to run Win2K on a 1.6GB drive. Enverex, amazing work, chap!