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2. Hardware

2.1 I have an adaptec SCSI controller. Does LRP support it ?

Not on the standard LRP kernel image. You have to roll your own. See the Linux Kernel HOWTO. Most adaptec drivers are in the 152x module (1502,1505,1510 1520 etc) or the aic7xxx module (2940, aic777 etc). Read the number on the biggest adaptec chip on the card/motherboard :)

2.2 Can I ru LRP on one of those cool Digital Alpha Multia machines ?

LRP hasn't been ported yet, paul@xtdnet.nl said he might do it if enough people are interested.

2.3 What is LRP known to work on ?

2.4 Does LRP works with leased lines ?

See Sangoma Wanpipe. paul: add what sangoma is

2.5 Where to find nice mainboards for LRP (paul please check) ?

The pos-468 from http://www.advantech-usa.com paul: features? 386-40xs from Jumbo (untested): www.jumbonet.com 386-40sx from Axion (untested): www.?

2.6 Does LRP work with giant RAM disks ?

I made a giant RAM disk cause I have ram to waste anyway and a nice big harddisk to boot from (or one of those cool diskonchip things) and now I get odd errors

The maximum minix filesystem size is 65MB. This should probably be a non issue soon.

2.7 Multiple Ethernet (paul please change) ?

www.matrox.com: under networking solutions and look for NIC'S

they have a quad intel 82558 board 100/10 Mbit (linux ready/tested)

they have a quad dec 21140 board 100/10 Mbit

they have a octal dec 21040 board 10 Mbit

they have a hex 100 Mbit repeater-nic board it is a fusion of a six port 100Mbit hub and a nic 21140 back end on a board this board can be strapped in quad board configuration giving a 24 port collision domain with a nic port to host

they also have single nic boards

all are PCI some have onboard CPU's for host cpu off loading but will not work with linux without some in house firmware change ($$$)....

some of the drivers will require some minimal code changes to get mac add form serial rom. (Martin Rousselle <mroussel@Matrox.com>

adaptec 4 port cards based on DEC 21140 (tulip.o)

2.8 Do you have a list of embedded PC's for nice tiny LRP routers ?

Courtesy David Smead smead@amplepower.com for the gathering:

Alphabetical order:

2.9 Boot PROM ? (fix me/todo)

Stay tuned on this one.

2.10 Is my Winmodem supported ?

See the discussion on linux-kernel/linux-net. There are apparently winmodems and softmodems. One of those uses a DSP for processing, while the other relies heavily on the main CPU to work. Almost all of them are propriety, so no Linux driver is available for them. Especially for a router it's a bad idea anyway. Imagine you need a faster Pentium-II becayse you added a modem......

2.11 Where can I find small PCs ?

A list of tiny PC manufacturors:

Book PC

We get small quantities from the US rep, Hector Tan, (888) 547-4656 x 104. Pentium 200MMX, 8 Meg, floppy, 4 com ports, NE2000 interface card, 2 LPT, video, NO HD for about $350. They will configure as needed so the price may vary. Stripped, direct from the factory in large quantity, for less than $200.

PC104 - No clue. anyone? (check cs*zip file) (see Linux Out of the Real World, Linux Journal 39, article.

2.12 Is there ATM support for LRP/Linux ? (fixme)

ATM development is being made for 2.1.x series, the versions for 2.0.x are rather old. A patch to the kernel is needed if I'm not mistaken. ATM could be used for more than that, if used in a back-to-back configuration (skipping the expensive switches) you can create channels with guaranteed bandwidth providing QoS for some applications/users. Take a look at:

lrcwww.epfl.ch/linux-atm/

Don't know if the interfaces for WAN are being developed also or the ones for lan apply without problems for WAN, typically are for 25/155 Mbps interfaces.

Extra tools might be needed

(paul: Can the wanpipe do ATM?)

2.13 Where can I find chipDISK-IDE ?

Try Jumptec. They sell "chipDISK-IDE" flash disk, in 4,8,16,24,48MB sizes, cost (as of 09/98) 121,169,287,409,695 DM. I think 1DM is about 0.60 US dollars.

2.14 Anybody using Atlas Communication Engines T1/E1 LAW ?

I understand it uses a slightly modified AMD driver.

www.ace360.com

2.15 Is wavelan supported ?

Yes, success reports for a radio link of 10km has been heard. Austin L. Gosling (agosling@ionet.com.ec) promised to work on MIB support for Wavelan for remote monitoring.

The wireless extensions are supported, but you need to compile iwconfig to work with libc.so.6 (requires changing pow10(...) calls to pow(10,..., etc.

The kernel stuff for wireless extensions is already there.

2.16 Where can I find second hand hardware ?

Some locations of auction or second hand sites:

www.onsale.com

2.17 What is this about serial BIOS access? I want it !

Looking over the PDF document from Phoenix (PhoenixBIOS[tm] 4.0 Release 6:

* Serial I/O capabilities - Servers are often located in remote locations, or far from system administrators. As a result, it is not always convenient to attempt to operate the server from a dedicated keyboard or monitor. Phoenix ServerBIOS includes the option to use a serial line to manage system operation instead of the usual keyboard/CRT, meeting this frequent user requirement.

Award:

ward's patented Preboot Management Solutions let network administrators control a remote PC or embedded system via modem or direct serial connection.

The product consists of a host application, Award Preboot Manager[tm] 2.0, and Award Preboot Agent[tm] 2.0, a modular BIOS extension in the remote system that can be integrated into the system BIOS. Together they let you diagnose and in many cases repair a nonbooting client without ever physically visiting the Agent location. Eliminating these costly trips to distributed systems can dramatically reduce Total Cost of Ownership and system downtime. When the Agent BIOS extension detects a boot failure, it calls the central administrative host, using standard serial protocols. Or the administrative host can initiate contact with an Agent.

Agent software is compatible with the AwardBIOS[tm] or, using the Agent SDK, it can be integrated into other x86-based BIOS software.

Any VT100 host can communicate with an Award Preboot Agent, although complete Agent functionality is available only with the Award Preboot Manager application.

2.18 What's DiskOnChip ?

It's a chip you can plug in some new motherboards to get a flash drive that behaves like an IDE drive. There is also an ISA card you can use for motherboards that dont have a DOC socket. It is made by M-Systems

See M-Systems

The DiskOnChip2000 has the following main characteristics - 2-72MBytes (144MBytes will be available soon) - Full BOOT compatibility - Full Disk read/write compatibility - Wide OS support (including Linux) - High reliability - MTBF larger then 1.5M hours - Internal wear leveling - Guarantees more than 100 years life time, before wearing out - Authomatic bad block mapping - H/W EDC/ECC - Easy H/W intergration (only 13 address lines, 8 data lines, and 3 control signals : CE, WE, OE are needed)

(paul: I just read this from dan bigelow (danno@mindsong.com))

*If* the latest LRP kernel is actually 'patched' for the DOC (I don't think it is) the DOC uses /dev/fla0 to /dev/fla4 (major=62 minor=0-4). If not, you have to get rid of these linuxrc mount efforts to get rid of the messages... And, without the kernel 'patch' (a small file called fl.o linked in and the above devices created), you cannot see the DOC at all. With the patch, it works as a normal block device that can see most normal partitions (DOS, Linux, etc.) that you create on the DOC with whatever tools you like to use.

There are a few seperate products using their chip. They mainly fall into two categories

- DiskOnChip This requires a special mainboard with jdec socket. Works with TrueFileSystem, and needs a driver between the TrueFileSystem and the OS (eg Linux). This is the "binary only" driver they have been referring to. They are not going to release sourcecode for this. Apparently, because Linux has a GPL licence and not an lGPL licence, some think this driver would be illegal. Though I personally seem to remember that this was one of the points of having loadable modules. If someone wants to know the gory details of the licences, they should probably look at the FSF or LI website, or try and ask in a gnu.* newsgroup.

- IDE/ATA/PCMCIA products These products feature the same chip, but in addition have an emulation mode onboard to emulate ide/ata/pcmcia. This emulation code then talks to the TrueFilesystem interface and back to the ide/ata/pcmcia endpoint. No seperate Linux drivers are needed for this because it appears as a regular ide/ata/pcmcia device.

Motherboards supporting DiskOnChip:

- Single Board Computers - Standard PC motherboards (ATX, NLX etc.) - All in one Thin-client motherbaords - VME boards and Compact PCI boards.

For a full list of these, there is a compatibility list on the M-Systems' WEB site ( M-Systems Flash Solutions).

For an example of a compiled kernel with the DiskOnChip driver, have a look at ftp.ionet.com.ec /pub/lrpdiskonchipkernel. This is an LRP kernel with the DiskOnChip driver compiled into it. This kernel wasn't created by M-Systems, but by Austin Gosling (e-mail: agosling@ionet.com.ec). (Note: Licence discussions can be made with the appropriate people , not the maintainer of the FAQ)

Austin writes: The DiskOnChip driver for DOS is an add-on to the BIOS. How exactly this works, I don't know, but to DOS, the DOC shows up as drive "C". So, to make LRP work on it, you just have to use the DOS version of syslinux (syslinux.com) to make it bootable, copy the kernel, syslinux.* and root.lrp files over (using DOS), and boot. syslinux boots the kernel and loads root.lrp. It boots just fine like this with no specific driver in the kernel for DOC. This is because up to now, all the I/O has been handled by DOS mechanisms. When the Linux kernel gets hold of the system, however, it can't mount the DOC to read and write from it.

Enter the DOC driver for the kernel. This driver somehow talks to the DOC (through the BIOS or not, I honestly don't know), and sets up /dev/fla. The devices /dev/fla, /dev/fla1..4 have to be created with mknod. After that, you can mount it and use it with LRP just as you would a floppy, which means, you can store packages on it, updated them, etc.

end quote

Note: AFAIK, M-Systems will not release the source code for the DOC

How to build a DOC kernel:

1) unpack the 2.0.34 kernel source tree somewhere (Would like to try this with LRP 2.9.3, but DiskOnChip driver is binary only, up to 2.0.33)

2) Apply the patches from the LRP 2.9.2 kernel distribution (under .../patches)

3) Get the driver from DiskOnChip (I can't post it here right now, because they're not freely distributing it yet - ask Esthers@m-sys.com for a copy.

4) Carefully check the files from DiskOnChip in linux/usr/src/linux. These are for 2.0.32, but did not change in 2.0.34, so they can all be copied over directly, with the exception of the Makefile in drivers/block, which is also modified by LRP patches (I think) - this was a couple of days ago, and I honestly don't remember. Basically, just follow M-systems instructions on compiling the kernel, but check everything they say to do first for clashes with LRP patches. Use the fl.33 version - it seems to work OK in 2.0.34.

5) I had to force another module to compile by adding the following line (marked with ***) to the Makefile in drivers/block: ifeq ($(CONFIG_BLK_DEV_GENERIC_FLASH_DOC),y) L_OBJS += flash_doc/fl.o *** L_OBJS += ide-floppy.o *** endif

I did it this way instead of with make config, because I just saw what symbols it was missing, and crowbarred it in (probably not the best way).

6) compile the kernel, and use the resulting zImage instead of the LRP dist. kernel.

7) In the LRP distribution, add the following to root.linuxrc somewhere _before_ it starts looking for filesystems to get packages from: mknod /dev/fla b 62 0 mknod /dev/fla1 b 62 1 mknod /dev/fla2 b 62 2 mknod /dev/fla3 b 62 3 mknod /dev/fla4 b 62 4

8) Use LRP as usual, changing root.mount to try /dev/fla1 first

You can now boot from, and load packages from, an MSDOS filesystem DiskOnChip with syslinux - Oh, Happy Day! Of course, you have to format, syslinux and setup the flash disk as you would a DOS floppy. Usually, the tffs BIOS stuff lets you do this using the DiskOnChip as drive C:

2.19 I got a SanDisk but it doesn't do IDE !

There are various versions of the SanDisk product line. Not all support IDE/ATA compatibility. Check out their FlashDrivers. you will need a 2.5" to 3.5" converter for most mainboards. These are also known as "laptop IDE cables". (november 98: 40Mb flash for $160), see Sandisk

The cable adapter can be ordered from Dalco (1800-445-5342), part no. 48755

2.20 What is a watchdog ?

A watchdog is a computer implementation of the "Deadman's switch". Train drivers used (perhaps still are?) to have to push down a switch to keep the train moving. If the driver died (heart attach or visit bt Steven Segal) the switch would be released (rigor mortis isn't instant) and the trai would stop.

Linux supports a similar mechanism as /dev/watchdog. If a process that opens /dev/watchdog doesn't write to it within 1 minute, the kernel cold reboots. Usually a daemon is repsonsible for doing this (confusingly called watchdog sometimes as well) which does this after doing some checks, like fork()ing, writing to disk, briefly allocating memory and finding everything is okay.

Apart from this software watchdog, there are also hardware watchdog cards. See /usr/src/linux/Documentation/watchdog.txt for more details

2.21 Where can I find LED displays ?

Some LED display links for LED display stuff:

2.22 What SMBD hardware is there ?

T1 support

Sangoma WANPIPE + S508 card, with T1 CSU/DSU

web page

http://www.sangoma.com

Protocols

FR, PPP, X.25

Interfaces

RS232, V.35, X.21, EIA 530

Price

US$869.00

Remarks

Mentioned on LRP home page ( www.linuxrouter.org).

ET/5025 synchronous communications adapter

Web page

www.etinc.com

Protocols

HDLC, LAPB, LAPD, FR, PPP, X.25 (1980, 1984, 1988)

Interfaces

RS232, V.35, RS-530, RS-449

Price

??? ( US$500?)

Remarks

Presumably requires an external T1 CSU/DSU, e.g. Kentrox DataSMART 656 (see Kentrox) at price=??? ( US$500?), and some kind of V.35 cabling.

There's also SDL Communications ( www.sdlcomm.com), but their driver support is spotty and they have a bad habit of announcing products that never appear. That's the only vendor I know of for PCI HSSI interfaces -- I don't know of any other way to get "multimegabit" on SMDS.

  1. SDL RISCom
  2. ETINC
  3. Sangoma
  4. Cronyx
  5. CPM
  6. Digiboard Sync/570

Nos 1 to 4 have Linux support. CPM, only supports NetBSD and Digiboard is supported by FreeBSD. Seems to me that many of these sync boards share the same chipsets like the Hitachi HD64570 (SDL and Digiboard).

2.23 Is there pcmcia support for LRP ?

There is an untested lrp package made by paul@xtdnet.nl. Contact him if you've tested it or if you improved it :)

2.24 What packages exist for LRP ? (fixme)

For now, look at the ftp site sorry...

2.25 Can I used 'extra' formatted floppies, like 1.74MB or 2m 1.88MB ?

Yes. Normal higher formats as well as some 2m formats will work.

Using Linux, try this:

1. fdformat /dev/fd0u1722 2. mkdosfs /dev/fd0u1722 3. syslinux -s /dev/fd0u1722 (the -s is very important here.) 4. edit syslinux.cfg and find: "boot=/dev/fd0" change that to "boot=/dev/fd0u1722" 5. mcopy linux a: mcopy etc.lrp a: mcopy log.lrp a: mcopy root.lrp a: mcopy modules.lrp a: mcopy syslinux.* a: (add your own packages here)

A problem with these disks is there is no way to accuratly determine their size. For LRP to be able to mount these disks, you must specify the correct size, IE fd0u1680, fd0u1840, etc. Apparently these disks break sooner as well (read errors etc), though I haven't heard of someone who had this problem more frequent then with regular disks (anyone)


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