Hi, On Fri, 2009-07-10 at 14:32 +0200, Erhard Schwenk wrote: > touchring <[email protected]> schrieb: > > eschwenk wrote: > >> > >> eschwenk: 'If you have enough Storage (at least I would recommend 2GB > >> Flash or a small Hard Disk), you can simply install standard Debian Lenny > >> on > >> Soekris. > > > Is Debian Lenny better than Voyage Linux? I know the latter is > > derived from the earlier. I intend to use Flash. > > I do not know that since I do not know Voyage Linux. But webmin is in > Debian Repository and so it should be possible to get it work without > too much Action. Maybe just the Version is a bit outdated, but that > should not be a Problem based on your description.
I don't know much about Voyage either, or any of the tailor-made "embedded" configurations (frequently called distributions), for that matter. One thing you might want to take into consideration though is the often overlooked aspect of continuity. During my 8 years or so of doing stuff with Linuxens, which is still relatively short, I've already seen quite a few of those small and highly specialized mini/embedded/otherwise_customized distros come and, moreover, go. I suspect mostly because setting up such a system is a great challenge and learning experience, yet keeping track of changes in the Mother System really is a drag, and a more resource-consuming one than one might have expected at first. Lifetime is definitely an issue with these specialized systems. On the other hand, you can safely assume that Debian will still be around in, say, five years from now. Besides that, the Debian folks are very conservative when it comes to making changes to the general system configuration. They will only change for example a configuration file format if they really have to, not just because it will make package installation 0.005% more efficient (that's a slight exaggeration, but you probably get the bigger picture here), so you won't have to deal with nasty surprises, or rewrite your configuration scripts every time a new version is released. Depending on design choices, you might encounter severe incompatibility issues with custom-configured systems. I can't say exactly which ones because I never use such systems anymore, but it's surely something to investigate before making a decision. The bottom line: if "bleeding-edge" and "hip", and in some cases "ease of administration", are what you're looking for, pick one of the so-called embedded distros. If you're thinking more in terms of "long-term", "continued support" and "reliability", then Debian should prove an excellent choice. Bill By the way, I've been accusing the Debian folks of making weird changes in the configuration in the past on this list, which turned out to stem from a well-known Debian derivative itself - my sincere apologies;). > >> We did this since the days of Etch on net4801 as well as on > >> net5501 using 2,5" Hard Drives or SSDs and a slightly adapted kernel > >> Image built with make-kpkg (you can get the working Parameters from > >> the soekris wiki) > > > do you mean Debian Lenny? > > We have had several Soekris net4801 and net5501 Boxes running Debian > Etch and Debian Lenny for years now and did not see any problems at > all except some necessary BIOS Updates and broken Power supplies which > were of course easy to fix. At this time all new Boxes get Lenny > installed. > > Installation is done just straightforward using PXE Boot, debootstrap > and some Skripts to do the fine tuning for our needs. The only thing > installed not from Debian repository is the Kernel .deb which itself > is built from Debian Kernel Sources by make-kpkg. > > Those Boxes serve as ADSL and Cable Routers, Firewalls, DNS-Cache, > Proxy, SMTP- and IMAP-Server, Fileserver, Printserver and several more > special Functions, depending on needs and size of the individual > Customer. Management is done completely by SSH from our Office, we > only visit the Customer if he wants that or if there is a Hardware > Problem. > > Some of this Boxes are even some 100km away from here. And if one of > the boxes reaches its performance limit, we can simply tar up the > system, move it to a more powerful machine and just have to replace > the hardware settings to get it work there. > > Oh, and we have some Hope as well that the next Soekris generation may > be powerful enough to run some Asterisk Services on it (net5501 seems > to be a bit short on CPU Power for this). This would be a perfect fit > for small Offices which then could have all communication needs > including Internet, E-Mail and Telephone served by one single Box > under the Desktop. > > _______________________________________________ Soekris-tech mailing list [email protected] http://lists.soekris.com/mailman/listinfo/soekris-tech
