or, a spruced-up authentication server. due to a failed cx4 switch, i've been updating a number of machines to spf+.
in the process, it seemed easier to replace the authentication server than to just slap a new nic in it. since cinap's iplfat gives one the ability to boot from usb, and usb drives are much cheeper than small ssds, i thought it might be worth doing it that way. in theory they're just as easy to swap out as a ssd. one problem. ipl lacks menus. so i spent a bit of time adding them yesterday. the syntax is a little different due to the need to keep ipl as small as possible. while at it, it was easy to update to the 64-bit kernel. and—bonus— it turned out the new box had a e3-v2 cpu which supports the rdrnd instruction. it's possible with rdrand to generate random numbers at several gigabytes/s. nix's k10 kernel can use rdrand to generate /dev/random randomness. and this saves a lot of cpu time. (~2000 cpu minutes/week). that sounds like a bit of trivia, but the bottom line is a 64-bit usb-booting auth server with no 9load in sight. that almost feels like progress. - erik