I recommend Slackware 14.2 for a few different reasons here: 1) offline installations The official install media can be used for most of your services, the gpsd stuff can be obtained from SBo.
2) Dependency resolution over the internet can be a problem for field work. Some here may disagree, but you don't want to be that guy who can't repair his computer without an active internet connection. If something should prevent this box from booting on the job, its very straightforward to boot a recovery stick and remove/replace offending packages. 3) No automated update schedule. You are in full control of which updates you pull in, and when. Gives you total control over the configuration of the device. The uptime benefit of this should be obvious. 4) Every release is an LTS release. If you upgrade to a newer release for updated drivers you will not see a significant change in overall system design. 5) This is an old device. Install software to match. With some of the changes recently in both debian and arch I doubt the reliability of those platforms on aged hardware. SysV init has decades of proven reliability, and that's just a fact. You want package sets A, AP, N, and L for a headless server (you select these during the install). If you want to build the packages for gpsd on this box, add package set D. This includes all common network services (samba/nfs/cups/ssh/ntp/httpd/dns/dhcpd) and commandline utilies for monitoring and control. -Ben On Sat, May 18, 2019 at 9:06 AM Michael Barnes <barnmich...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I haven't messed with much in the hardware department for years. I recently > picked up a small 12V computer I want to use for some field applications in > ham radio. It presently has a conventional 160 GB SATA WD Caviar Blue drive > in it now. I'd like to replace that with a comparable SSD that is hopefully > just plug and play with the existing SATA connectors. Is that possible? My > intent is to just load a basic Linux install (probably CentOS) from a USB > stick and run a few basic services. It will have a USB GPS puck and run > gpsd and ntp. I'll run the normal network server stuff of dhcp, dns, etc. I > guess Samba is still the thing for a file server. It will not be connected > to the Internet when in the field. The field network will be a bunch of > Windows laptops and will need to share some files across the network with > the server. > > So, all that to ask, what should I get for an SSD for this thing? This is a > low budget project. > > Thanks for your ideas. > Michael > _______________________________________________ > PLUG mailing list > PLUG@pdxlinux.org > http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list PLUG@pdxlinux.org http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
