Re: [Server-devel] Looking for new low power server hardware candidate
When I took the picture in the following url, I was focusing on what it would take to run off of 12V deep cycle battery: http://schoolserver.wordpress.com/xs-installation/xs-0-7-running-on-xo-1-5/ I'm concerned with packaging, and physical robustness in a real school setting. Maybe we could get someone with ME skills to dream up a cheap package for all the accessory items. We probably don't need the DC to DC inverter and the usb hub. But then we don't have an extra port for sneaker-net, or an adult sized usb keyboard. At the fall 2011 summit, there was a general call for a turnkey XS that just worked. If we could solve the form factor problem, the XO1.75 might be a good solution. I think it was Sameer who was telling me that in Australia, they are thinking about one XS per classroom. In that setting, seems to me that XO1.75 (even with only 512MB memory) would be more than adequate. George On Tue, Apr 10, 2012 at 10:55 PM, John Watlington w...@laptop.org wrote: Why not an XO-1.75 ? On Apr 10, 2012, at 8:04 PM, Martin Langhoff wrote: On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 2:03 AM, George Hunt georgejh...@gmail.com wrote: I left my fitpc2 and msi servers in the Philippines, hoping they would be pressed into service in a classroom situation. So now I'm in the market for another toy. If you have time towork with us through some hitches, I'd recommend an ARM server. At this stage I'd say one of the Marvell/Globalscale Plug servers (dreamplug for example), or a trimslice. Either option will need a combination of the OS on internal SD/eMMC and the storage on an ext HDD (via USB probably). cheers, m -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- Software Architect - OLPC - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Looking for new low power server hardware candidate
G'day George, The trouble with a full mechanical engineering treatment of this is that there's no telling what size each of the parts will be. For something similar I used a kitchen vegetable rack. This is a plastic shelf, with feet, with a square grid pattern. It is often used for potatos and onions in food storage here, since these two vegetables are best stored without light. The grid pattern allows equipment to be anchored using cable ties. It also has good airflow. Equipment can be anchored above and below the floor of the rack. Cables can be threaded through widened holes. You may be able to simplify your design a bit: 1. move from a USB HDD to a fast high spec SD card, saves one port, enough saving to avoid the USB hub and DC/DC inverter, 2. locate a USB hub that takes a 12V input, 3. decide on only one Ethernet interface. A minor thing; I would not have the input USB cable beyond the baseboard. It may be hit. -- James Cameron http://quozl.linux.org.au/ ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Looking for new low power server hardware candidate
On 04/11/2012 04:52 PM, James Cameron wrote: G'day George, The trouble with a full mechanical engineering treatment of this is that there's no telling what size each of the parts will be. For something similar I used a kitchen vegetable rack. This is a plastic shelf, with feet, with a square grid pattern. It is often used for potatos and onions in food storage here, since these two vegetables are best stored without light. The grid pattern allows equipment to be anchored using cable ties. It also has good airflow. Equipment can be anchored above and below the floor of the rack. Cables can be threaded through widened holes. You may be able to simplify your design a bit: 1. move from a USB HDD to a fast high spec SD card, saves one port, enough saving to avoid the USB hub and DC/DC inverter, 2. locate a USB hub that takes a 12V input, 3. decide on only one Ethernet interface. A minor thing; I would not have the input USB cable beyond the baseboard. It may be hit. We have been using MSI Windbox DE-220 at Nepal and it is performing good at deployment sites. -- Abhishek Singh System Engineer Open Learning Exchange (OLE) Nepal साझा शिक्षा ई-पाटी http://www.olenepal.org Tel: +977-1-551 ext. 102 signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Looking for new low power server hardware candidate
On Tue, Apr 10, 2012 at 10:55 PM, John Watlington w...@laptop.org wrote: Why not an XO-1.75 ? Good point. And XO + AP + HDD would work fantastic. George, how many users per server? If 100, an XO-1.75 will do ok. Want to sign up for the Contributors Programme (search in the wiki for the URL). XO-1.75, Plug or Trimslice will do fine with a recent Fedora for ARM (from the upcoming F17 series) -- we just need to recompile the XS specific packages. Most of them will just work. AFAIK, ejabberd and xs-config will need some work, and I can help you with those. cheers, m -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- Software Architect - OLPC - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Looking for new low power server hardware candidate
On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 1:53 PM, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Apr 10, 2012 at 10:55 PM, John Watlington w...@laptop.org wrote: Why not an XO-1.75 ? Good point. And XO + AP + HDD would work fantastic. George, how many users per server? If 100, an XO-1.75 will do ok. Want to sign up for the Contributors Programme (search in the wiki for the URL). XO-1.75, Plug or Trimslice will do fine with a recent Fedora for ARM (from the upcoming F17 series) -- we just need to recompile the XS specific packages. Most of them will just work. AFAIK, ejabberd and xs-config will need some work, and I can help you with those. It might be worthwhile seeing what we can get into mainline Fedora for the XS releases so that as the new RHEL releases come along it will just work as well as be usable on ARM platforms. Peter ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Looking for new low power server hardware candidate
On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 5:29 AM, George Hunt georgejh...@gmail.com wrote: When I took the picture in the following url, I was focusing on what it would take to run off of 12V deep cycle battery: http://schoolserver.wordpress.com/xs-installation/xs-0-7-running-on-xo-1-5/ That's very cool! I'm concerned with packaging, and physical robustness in a real school setting. Maybe we could get someone with ME skills to dream up a cheap package for all the accessory items. I can't speak much about ME, but I can suggest looking at some TP-LINK and Sapido branded small APs that take USB power. You can have a USB-powered HDD as well, and you still have a free USB port on the XO. At the fall 2011 summit, there was a general call for a turnkey XS that just worked. If we could solve the form factor problem, the XO1.75 might be a good solution. I'm exploring that path with a variant of the Dreamplug, but that won't happen overnight. I think it was Sameer who was telling me that in Australia, they are thinking about one XS per classroom. In that setting, seems to me that XO1.75 (even with only 512MB memory) would be more than adequate. One XS per classroom is a _bad_ idea for other reasons. One AP per classroom is a good idea, OTOH, and an XO-1.75 can probably handle a mid-sized school OK. cheers, m -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- Software Architect - OLPC - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Looking for new low power server hardware candidate
On Apr 10, 2012, at 5:04 PM, Martin Langhoff wrote: On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 2:03 AM, George Hunt georgejh...@gmail.com wrote: I left my fitpc2 and msi servers in the Philippines, hoping they would be pressed into service in a classroom situation. So now I'm in the market for another toy. If you have time towork with us through some hitches, I'd recommend an ARM server. At this stage I'd say one of the Marvell/Globalscale Plug servers (dreamplug for example), or a trimslice. Either option will need a combination of the OS on internal SD/eMMC and the storage on an ext HDD (via USB probably). The Kirkwood based systems such plug computers can boot both the kernel and OS from a hard drive. I have been talking with one of he Fedora ARM team about this and am going to send them an email about what is involved and some other things about the kirkwood based devices. cheers, m -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- Software Architect - OLPC - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] XS on ARM update.
Martin, I have been meaning to email you an update about XS on ARM for a while. I had to take a hiatus from what I was doing with it, but started back on it a while back. I had been experimenting with getting XS components running on ARM. That was with Fedora 13 for ARM. With Fedora 13 for ARM ejabberd behaved nicely. I was in the process of moving to Fedora 15 but then Fedora 15 stayed in perpetual alpha and I wanted to be on a release that was well supported. Then Fedora 17 for ARM koji is building much faster than expected so I am in the process of moving over to Fedora 17. Note that currently Puppet relies on some hard coded intel specific code. I would like to chat with you some time about this as I want to discuss what is essential for the XS and which is the correct git branches etc to pull from for some olpc specific bits. . Robert Howard ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] XS on ARM update.
On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 12:13 PM, rihowa...@gmail.com rihowa...@gmail.com wrote: I have been meaning to email you an update about XS on ARM for a while. I had to take a hiatus from what I was doing with it, but started back on it a while back. Great that you're back on track. True, Fedora branches were unpredictable, but the F17 push is solid. That's where it's at. Note that currently Puppet relies on some hard coded intel specific code. Oh really? I'm assuming it'd be in the facter code, using lspci and dmidecode to get the facts about hardware? Short term it only needs to handle a missing lspci and dmidecode without panicking -- XO hardware is pretty fixed for a given model anyway -- long term, Puppet will want to datamine sysfs where available. Not sure if it'll replace lspci in all cases, but on HW that doesn't have a PCI bus, well... :-) I would like to chat with you some time about this as I want to discuss what is essential for the XS and which is the correct git branches etc to pull from for some olpc specific bits. Let's flesh it out here. What are your doubts? AFAIK, most things we have for the XS should work on latest F17 ARM, some things will need a rebuild from SRPM. Exceptions: - There is a tricky situation with ejabberd which will need careful handling. See the mailing list archive. For XS 0.7 we found the problem late and IIRC the fix we applied there won't work for F17. So some work is needed here. - xs-configuration handling of network-- note that this is _optional_. - All the services will be using old style init scripts. We need to invest time in either testing that they work with systemd (compat isn't perfect), or porting them to systemd (and testing that they work too ;-) ). cheers, m -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- Software Architect - OLPC - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Looking for new low power server hardware candidate
On 11 April 2012 22:59, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 5:29 AM, George Hunt georgejh...@gmail.com wrote: I think it was Sameer who was telling me that in Australia, they are thinking about one XS per classroom. In that setting, seems to me that XO1.75 (even with only 512MB memory) would be more than adequate. It's just an idea for us. We haven't actioned anything. One XS per classroom is a _bad_ idea for other reasons. One AP per classroom is a good idea, OTOH, and an XO-1.75 can probably handle a mid-sized school OK. Why is it such a bad idea? The thought was to do away with registration, moodle and other unnecessary services and focus only on the XMPP server. Cheers, Sridhar ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Looking for new low power server hardware candidate
On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 11:57 PM, Sridhar Dhanapalan srid...@laptop.org.au wrote: Why is it such a bad idea? The thought was to do away with registration, moodle and other unnecessary services and focus only on the XMPP server. You want to run a network of federated XMPP servers? It's madness. Rather, it's not madness, but until demonstrated/automated otherwise it's a high-maintenance-per-classroom setup. And the federated XMPP stuff isn't widely used == widely tested. We get obvious and clear bugs in parts of the XMPP implementation that are used (or should be used) _everywhere_. And this is on what is reportedly the best XMPP implementation available. My appetite for putting an exotic feature into use in the _middle_ of a deployment plan is... just not there. In any case, what's the upside of one-XS-per-classroom? Cost, administration, reliance on federated-XMPP all seem downsides/risks to me. cheers, m -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- Software Architect - OLPC - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
