Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[sunburnt]

ecomoney; Just a note, I used Puppy for the PXEboot & user space in LanPuppy.
Fairly easy to get working with Debian files, but SmoothWall may be really simple.

[Aitch]

aarf

UK does!

Rob/ecomoney

Re: SSD drives; I just bought a 16Gb flash drive on ebay for less than a tenner - [£15 inc post from HK]32Gb's go for about £40 some are freepost
64Gb's are around £100, which is cheaper than a similar sized 2 1/2" SSD at around £140

So it depends how many Gig you need, but I'd have thought a couple of 16s is best value

Mind you, every now & then someone sells a 128 or 256 Gig SSD on ebay for around £150, especially the older ones which just have multiple ram sticks of the DDR type [some have 6 slots] & can be uprated

I'm sure I remember a diy version advertised a couple of years back, ....just had a button battery added to a row of memory slots AFAIK

Then there's always CF + adapter.....


Note: Sensible precaution to be used re: removable media!

HTH

Also, as an alternate to smoothwall, have a look at Belserver basic XFCE

http://www.pclosbe.org/mwiki/index.php?title=Using_BEL_Server_Basic


~~ and sorry, I can't afford to donate, but wish you well, & of course, will assist any way, just ask, OK [Though I'm probably less technically capable than you, to be honest ]


PS: If someone were willing to donate.......[ ]

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12381&Itemid=67

Aitch

[ecomoney]

http://www.nextlevelhardware.com/storage/battleship/

If money were no object.....well strictly speaking it isnt anymore

not when you can have double the resilience of a ssd disk for £20

saying that £10 is the price from ebay Aitch

RAID = one ssd fails, the other continues automatically, After texting me to warn me that is, that is also doable.

A two disk ssd raid of 16gb each is more reliable than one new 1tb model. Smoothwall 3.0 iso is only 80mb big, this leaves probably 15.8gb after installation for logs. Decades worth of them. SSD is far more reliable reading than writing. That would be its job, reading puppy files (initrd.gz and vmlinuz) and sending them down the wire to the machines. Writing logs once on a fresh piece of ssd disk. Disk failure, the only problem to affect us once in cybercafe, will be VERY unlikely.

Thank you for the research Aitch, i will check out the BEL Server Basic

If anyone would like to donate some tech, or even sell or get us some cheaply, it would indeed be a great help. Wonder if its possible to puppy this cybercafe for less than £30 too? The budgets are a bit better this time I think I had best check with management



Another thought:-

Maybe we have the beginnings of an export market here?

At the docks, many travellers come in with Laptops with a faulty OS. With this setup, they could be booted up with puppy via PXE/Netboot, puppy installed on them (without having to format the drives and lose personal files. The seamans mission could take a small donation from this, but still charge much less than it would cost the traveller to have Windoze reinstalled.

Laptop is miraculously "fixed", never to fail again. The traveller takes the laptop back to their own country, or to other ports. Word of puppy linux's awesomeness is taken around the world

[ecomoney]

I have Just done some theoretical number crunching

Size of puppy 4.2 = approx 100mb

Ethernet Transfer speed = 11.92mb per second (Source)

Speed of SATA ssd 2x Raid Data transfer30*2= 60mb per second (source)

Time to transfer puppy files over ethernet from and boot client p.c.'s?

100 divided by 11.92 = 8.39 seconds

0 to Puppy in 8.4 seconds? :

Would only become slower booting if more than 5 computers were being booted simultaneously (60mb divided by 11.92mb/s). Im not sure the computers could have their power buttons pressed at the same time to actually boot slower, without some serious co-ordinated teamwork.

shock:

[raffy]

Good number-crunching. But that's only transfer of files. Plus, the PXE-booting BIOS has its own routines, so make it 10-12 seconds total for PXE's transfer of files. Then Puppy actually begins the boot process.

Oh, one other thing. PXE is Intel technology, so if some BIOS don't have it, there is gPXE (I came to know of this through SLITAZ).

What will be baffling to many is that you can detach the Puppy PC from the network and it will still continue running. The is the so-called "fire-and-forget" property of small Linuxes when booted from the network (Steve Shiao of NCHC-Taiwan told me that; Steve helped Barry with humongous initrd creation in the days of Puppy 2.16).

[Aitch]

Be careful with symbols, Rob,

That reference gives 11.92 MegaBytes i.e. MB as opposed to mb or Mb; megabits, as 100Mb Lan speed
But why not invest a few quid in a gigabit card, an make the server more capable of multi-connections?
A gigabit card can send 10x100Mb outputs simultaneously, through a suitable router/switchbox!

Also, Raid 10 is often recommended over Raid 5 or Raid 0, for server reliability, however off-source backups are still recommended, too

Aitch:)

[ecomoney]

What, network boot only works on intels? This may cause some problem. I think most of the computers there are intels, but havnt done a full audit as yet. Thank you for the link and the info...however much bad news it is!

Sorry about the wrong denomination....erm how would it effect the sums?

Over the next few days Im setting up a few machines through a router, as a very simple mock-up of the cybercafe, to test the setup. I think I will do it with the puppy 4.1.2 initrd.gz and vmlinuz as they are already available (I think) although eventually I will have to learn how to make them myself for DeepThought.

Who is Steve sorry? If he helped Barry with getting pxe booting going for puppy then welcome whoever you are!

Im going to have to look into the different RAID technologies too....this is going to be a learning curve for me!

[Aitch]

Rob,

These look better value than your Battleship stuff @ £120 each

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=320347793058

Check the speeds!! However, SATA2!!

[MagicZaurus]

Network booting also works with AMD. Important is that the network card and BIOS support PXE/Network Booting. I have an old machine which uses some kind of proprietary Novel driver for network boot and then PXE will not work, unless you flash the card with gPXE or some other tricks like gPXE on a boot floppy/CD.

You can start your setup with the initrd.gz and vmlinuz from version 4.1.2. Once 4.2 is released and WhoDo provides an Unleashed version, then building the new humongous initrd.gz is not much of a problem.

Important is that your DHCP and TFTP server are setup correct. The rest is just putting vmlinuz and initrd.gz in the right folder with the right permissions.

Any problems just post here and there should be a few people around, who have done PXE boot before, to answer your questions.

[raffy]

As long as the PC's BIOS can do PXE, then the manufacturer must have licensed the technology from Intel. Older boards generally don't have it.

Steve Shiao has done his work - enable net-booting for Puppy Linux, and unleashed is now there supporting net-booting. MagicZaurus is one of the guys building Puppy from unleashed.

The problem of remastering a net-booted pup has been asked, and RamWreck has started work on it.

[ecomoney]

Thank you for all the links and additional information

Now i have all the info to get started. Ive "hired" the use of a quiet room for three days set up three computers and my laptop in it, and installed one with Smoothwall 3.0 SP1. Its an old 366mhz server from a school with a SCSI drive lol. Ive been playing about today trying to get the smoothwall mod onto it, but lacked a network hub. I had to use the wireless router as a hub to attach to the internal network card ("Green" in Smoothwall Speak).

This caused the i.p. address of the smoothwall to conflict with the wireless router (they both wanted to dish out i.p. addresses on 192.168.0.1?). I remember running into this problem before at the cybercafe but luckily then the guys at the Smoothwall forum really helped me out. I have to set the address of one of them 10.0.0.1 or something...will have to go over the thread again, or preferably get hold of a hub from somewhere (I think I know where there is a 24 port 10mb hub, and I definetely know I have a have a 5 port, but only one of the ports works!)

My problem was, the wireless router was upstairs, and when I had it plugged in downstairs, I couldnt get any internet to look up the documentation, so I had to keep unplugging it and take it up and down the stairs. The result wasnt a very productive day. I must re-install Smoothwall tommorow with the new dhcp server settings (10.0.0.1) and see if that cures it.

Apparently I need to access the command line on the smoothwall server by logging in with a thing called "Putty". I remember doing this at the cybercafe to install the web filtering service.....a great many of the little darlings that went were keen to test puppy linux's virus resilience in totally inappropriate ways!

To tell the truth, Im a bit stuck on how to use putty with puppy linux. If there is anyone reading who has experience with it would you write a short howto on this thread....it would be good to keep the documentation on how to do the project complete in case anyone wants to copy the setup.

Putty would give me command line access, like I was sitting at the machine. My bash/command line experience is probably enough to dot about the directories and edit text files and do simple stuff. I know there is a command to transfer the smoothwall mod files files and install them via the command line on the Smoothwall linux machine. Most of the mods come with instructions about what to type in.

I think it would also be possible to log into the smoothwall machine remotely over the internet from home (Hull is about 40 miles away and immingham about 30). This way I could transfer new puppy initrd.gz and vmlinuz files to the tftp folder on the Smoothwalls (which basically is going to be a new puppy linux as the pup_420.sfs file is contained in the initrd.gz). All they would need to do is reboot the machines. Apparently they have a "fixed i.p. address" at the cafe's, which I think I would need.

Im thinking this way I could re-install new operating systems the sixty or so machines on the entire two cybercafe's from my laptop while sipping my morning coffee.

Im just thinking about the wear and tear on my car of course, and keeping time and expenses to a minimum for the cybercafe's.

With regard to the machines currently at the cybercafe and their ability to netboot, I will have to check each one individually of course, unless an audit or "asset register" already exists. The machine I did the demo was a Compaq EVO 2.8/512gb so is a fairly high speed. I have one here, and also our secretary uses one (although of slightly lower spec) and I know they have netboot capability in the bios.

From what was mentioned at the meeting, the netbooting/PXE capability is only lacking on older non-intel machines? I know they described the current speed of the machines (that were recently all upgraded I think I heard them mention) as being able to run windows XP at an "acceptable speed"....but that is a relative term Something tells me...with puppy's longevity its going to be a while before they have to spend money to upgrade their hardware again....and Redmund wont get any of it!!!

For the moment, I need to get the netboot/smoothwall setup done and familiar in my head. Hopefully when I see the seafarers cybercafe next I can bring along a smoothwall p.c., pre-configured to boot all of the machines connected to it into puppy linux 4.2 at whatever stage that is in at the time.

Like I say, will document this entire process when its "done", for other people to set up similar puppy based systems where they are in the world. I will also contact some people to run it as a "feature" in some linux magazines/websites/digg/slashdot etc. Im sure its going to be both a great testing ground, and a great advertisement for Puppy Linux. Im really grateful there are so many technically talented experts offering their help and assistance with this project.

[paulh177]

putty is a lovely little ssh/telnet client.

but can't you just use the BusyBox telnet already in Puppy?

if not then perhaps someone can compile it (i've had a quick go but something's not right and I have to go to work so no time this morning to sort it out)

take care

[raffy]

@ecomoney: As you are now a network guy, be ready always with a crossover cable for testing.

The TFTP server that I used in Windows likes to use its own DHCP, so perhaps if you use a router and encounter problems, then turn off its DHCP server function.

As to remote replacement of Puppy images, I doubt it, as when you do, there should be a parallel effort to update help leaflets or posters in the cafes. Simple menu prints could change with a Puppy file overhaul. So your presence would still be needed in the sites with every change.

[paulh177]

ah had a look at the smoothwall manual ... you don't have to use Putty, any old ssh (secure telnet, in essence) client will do, and there's one in Puppy anyway - in the network menu.

[paulh177]

ah had a look at the smoothwall manual ... you don't have to use Putty, any old ssh (secure telnet, in essence) client will do, and there's one in Puppy anyway - in the network menu.