Doing a few throughput tests on IPCop on the OB800 I noticed it was working very hard. A bit of poking around revealed that tweaking could the hard drive settings made a lot of difference. Switching on 32-bit access and unmasking interrupts during operation improved network throughput and dropped CPU load at the same time. I guess logging onto CF was taking long enough to affect the network.
Anyway, the net result is to add the following to /etc/rc.d/rc.local
/sbin/hdparm -u1 -c1 /dev/hda
This also works for DSL, though the file to modify is /opt/bootlocal.sh
Friday, 12 August 2011
Wednesday, 27 July 2011
IPCop on the Omnibook 800CT
I had planned to convert a couple of my Omnibook 800's into a firewall and a NAS respectively since they are low power and built like brick-privys. Herewith are my firewall experiences...
I've been using IPCop for a while although activity and progress towards V2.0 has kind of dropped off, it still works for me though the loss of Snort support is a little annoying. It is the rear facing side of a dual-bastion configuration so the forward 'wall takes most of the crud.
In any case, something a little more elderly might help since it only has 32MB RAM and a P133 to run on.
First off, unlike Damn Small Linux the IPCop boot floppy can't see my PCMCIA CDROM drive so it's back to my Omnibook CDROM drive. Unfortunately I don't have a power cable so I have to feed it AA batteries which it consumes at a prodigious rate - hooray for rechargeables.
I have scored a couple of Xircom 10/100 Ethernet/56K modem PCMCIA (not Cardbus) cards off eBay which seem to supported by IPCop so we are good to go. In order to fit both cards in, I need dongled ethernet cards rather than the fat cards that seem prevalent today.
Boot from floppy (get an image from the IPCop CD) proceeds until it tries to load the additional drivers from floppy. It appears that the IPCop 1.4.20 CD has a corrupt drivers floppy image so I backtrack to 1.4.10 for no particular reason.
Boot from floppy and loading the drivers floppy then works...until it discovers the 128MB CF (in a CF/2.5-inch hdd adapter) for /dev/harddisk1 which is apparently too small. A quick raid on my digital camera scores a Kingston 1GB CF which solves the problem. Other than that the install goes smoothly.
...Until I bring IPCop up - when I discover that the GREEN network is fine but the RED does not function. The dongle lights up to indicate a 100MB connection and flashes to show traffic but I can't ping the front firewall or, indeed, reach it in any way. Hmmm.
After a bit of digging around gets me to /proc/interrupts which indicates that the RED PCMCIA card is sharing an interrupt , IRQ 9, with something else whereas the GREEN is not. It all comes back now, back in the days before ACPI and all that fancy stuff when we had to worry about IRQ's.
A reboot and F2 press later, I have disabled the serial port on the Omnibook thereby freeing up IRQ 4. This now needs to be pressed into service for the RED Xircom instead of IRQ 9. A quick visit to /etc/pcmcia/config.opts allows me to disable IRQ 9 and enable IRQ 4 for PCMCIA and a further reboot later (this is getting like a Windows install!) all is well and I have an operational firewall. A flurry of patches later, I now have a reasonably up-to-date firewall.
One other thing, I note that the screen blanker on IPCop does not power down the backlight. Fortunately, pressing the on/off button on the Omnibook with the power plugged in powers down the screen, keyboard and mouse but leaves everything else running...perfect!
I've been using IPCop for a while although activity and progress towards V2.0 has kind of dropped off, it still works for me though the loss of Snort support is a little annoying. It is the rear facing side of a dual-bastion configuration so the forward 'wall takes most of the crud.
In any case, something a little more elderly might help since it only has 32MB RAM and a P133 to run on.
First off, unlike Damn Small Linux the IPCop boot floppy can't see my PCMCIA CDROM drive so it's back to my Omnibook CDROM drive. Unfortunately I don't have a power cable so I have to feed it AA batteries which it consumes at a prodigious rate - hooray for rechargeables.
I have scored a couple of Xircom 10/100 Ethernet/56K modem PCMCIA (not Cardbus) cards off eBay which seem to supported by IPCop so we are good to go. In order to fit both cards in, I need dongled ethernet cards rather than the fat cards that seem prevalent today.
Boot from floppy (get an image from the IPCop CD) proceeds until it tries to load the additional drivers from floppy. It appears that the IPCop 1.4.20 CD has a corrupt drivers floppy image so I backtrack to 1.4.10 for no particular reason.
Boot from floppy and loading the drivers floppy then works...until it discovers the 128MB CF (in a CF/2.5-inch hdd adapter) for /dev/harddisk1 which is apparently too small. A quick raid on my digital camera scores a Kingston 1GB CF which solves the problem. Other than that the install goes smoothly.
...Until I bring IPCop up - when I discover that the GREEN network is fine but the RED does not function. The dongle lights up to indicate a 100MB connection and flashes to show traffic but I can't ping the front firewall or, indeed, reach it in any way. Hmmm.
After a bit of digging around gets me to /proc/interrupts which indicates that the RED PCMCIA card is sharing an interrupt , IRQ 9, with something else whereas the GREEN is not. It all comes back now, back in the days before ACPI and all that fancy stuff when we had to worry about IRQ's.
A reboot and F2 press later, I have disabled the serial port on the Omnibook thereby freeing up IRQ 4. This now needs to be pressed into service for the RED Xircom instead of IRQ 9. A quick visit to /etc/pcmcia/config.opts allows me to disable IRQ 9 and enable IRQ 4 for PCMCIA and a further reboot later (this is getting like a Windows install!) all is well and I have an operational firewall. A flurry of patches later, I now have a reasonably up-to-date firewall.
One other thing, I note that the screen blanker on IPCop does not power down the backlight. Fortunately, pressing the on/off button on the Omnibook with the power plugged in powers down the screen, keyboard and mouse but leaves everything else running...perfect!
Toshiba NB100 upgrade from OpenSuSE 11.2 to 11.4
Ok, I have a bit of spare time in between DMSTech and LibDevConX^2 so I decided to upgrade my NB100 to OpenSuSE 11.4 using the downloaded iso image on my Zalman ZM-VE200. Having copied the important data onto the Zalman, I select the OpenSuSE image and reboot.
The laptop boots from the image perfectly, possibly slight faster than from actual DVD drive and I select the Update option when it is presented. The I go with defaults except that I don't let it delete all my added package repositories like Packman and VideoLAN since it's easier to go in afterwards and simply change 11.2 in the path to 11.4 instead of adding them anew. There is one dependency issue which I resolve by not installing the offending item and then it's time to go and get a coffee while installation proceeds.
And that's pretty much it - the install went through without a hitch and it seems pretty much all my settings etc. have transferred correctly.
The laptop boots from the image perfectly, possibly slight faster than from actual DVD drive and I select the Update option when it is presented. The I go with defaults except that I don't let it delete all my added package repositories like Packman and VideoLAN since it's easier to go in afterwards and simply change 11.2 in the path to 11.4 instead of adding them anew. There is one dependency issue which I resolve by not installing the offending item and then it's time to go and get a coffee while installation proceeds.
And that's pretty much it - the install went through without a hitch and it seems pretty much all my settings etc. have transferred correctly.
Tuesday, 26 July 2011
Omnibook 300 revisited
After a little while gathering dust, I managed to score a 1.1 BIOS card for the Omnibook 300 off eBay. This means that the beast can finally use Compact Flash cards, and provides great resting place for some of the pile of CF cards under 1G that I have accumulated. The machine actually pre-dated the PCMCIA ATA specification so, on release, it could only use linear flash cards or one specific WD drive with a somewhat home-grown ATA-over-PCMCIA spec.
If you insert a blank (FAT, not FAT 32) formatted CF and boot up, the ROM DOS will ask you if you want to format it. This puts Doublespace on the drive which just takes up processing power and RAM. This made sense when all you could get was a 10MB flash card or a little 40MB WD hard drive but not with 256MB of CF goodness. So, politely decline and all the necessary boot-up files will be copied to the uncompressed drive.
I have been experimenting with alternative shells to Win 3.1 Program Manager since it's a bit painful. Back in the day I was fond of the IBM Workplace Shell for Windows which gave Win 3.1 an OS2 like look-and-feel with things like right-click context menus. However, it doesn't perform very well on the Omnibook and the OS/2 grey dialogues don't render very nicely on the unlit mono display. The next thing to try was Calmira II which attempts to replicate the Win95 shell and performs rather better.
I also rediscovered and joined the Omnibook mailing list - targetted at the classic OB's it hasn't got a lot of traffic now but if you post it lights up with activity as OB fans come out of the woodwork. The archives are a mine of information.
If you insert a blank (FAT, not FAT 32) formatted CF and boot up, the ROM DOS will ask you if you want to format it. This puts Doublespace on the drive which just takes up processing power and RAM. This made sense when all you could get was a 10MB flash card or a little 40MB WD hard drive but not with 256MB of CF goodness. So, politely decline and all the necessary boot-up files will be copied to the uncompressed drive.
I have been experimenting with alternative shells to Win 3.1 Program Manager since it's a bit painful. Back in the day I was fond of the IBM Workplace Shell for Windows which gave Win 3.1 an OS2 like look-and-feel with things like right-click context menus. However, it doesn't perform very well on the Omnibook and the OS/2 grey dialogues don't render very nicely on the unlit mono display. The next thing to try was Calmira II which attempts to replicate the Win95 shell and performs rather better.
I also rediscovered and joined the Omnibook mailing list - targetted at the classic OB's it hasn't got a lot of traffic now but if you post it lights up with activity as OB fans come out of the woodwork. The archives are a mine of information.
Tuesday, 15 March 2011
Zalman ZM-VE200
Just got hold of a Zalman ZM-VE200 hard drive USB enclsoure which is pretty standard except for one thing - it can emulate an optical drive. As someone who builds and upgrades systems on a regular basis at work and home this is phenomenally useful.
I ordered the drive from LinItx in the UK - it comes in black or silver, along with a Samsung M7 320GB laptop drive (since the enclosure takes 2.5-inch drives). The drive is nicely packaged and even includes a tiny screwdriver to fit the drive. Unfortunately, the device comes with practically no documentation so herewith are my discoveries.
I ordered the drive from LinItx in the UK - it comes in black or silver, along with a Samsung M7 320GB laptop drive (since the enclosure takes 2.5-inch drives). The drive is nicely packaged and even includes a tiny screwdriver to fit the drive. Unfortunately, the device comes with practically no documentation so herewith are my discoveries.
- The drive can be partitioned but the first partition must be NTFS for optical emulation to work (you can use FAT32 but then you are limited to 4GB files which means you can't do many DVD images). I tried ext2 but it didn't work.
- The NTFS partition should have a folder called _iso - case is important. This is where you put the .iso images of the disks you want emulated.
- Image files must be unfragmented, so best to copy one-at-time or defrag after loading up. This is not documented but if you select a fragemented image the message DEFRAG appears on the LCD.
- Image filenames should only have a single dot in them - otherwise they are not recognised, since filenames are parsed to the first dot to determine extension. As I know Windows sometimes have this stupidity I can't compain,
- You use the jog-wheel on the side to scroll through the images (which are displayed on a small LCD on the drive) and press it to select which one you want to mount. Subfolders are supported, selecting one opens it. There is a ".." entry to go up again.
- There is only a single USB connector on the drive cable - this means that some USB ports have trouble powering up the drive (the display flashes or you experience read-errors during optical drive emulation). However, I've not had a problem with laptop ports or ones on motherboard backplates.
- The drive is write-protectable, useful for using it for virus removal.
- Optical drive emulation works perfectly - it can be booted from to install machines from CD or DVD images. Allegedly, it can even emulate Blueray BD-ROM drives but I don't have such an image to hand.
Friday, 21 May 2010
Lifebook U810 and OpenSuse 11.2
OK, heartened by my OpenSuse 11.2 experience on the NB100 - where pretty much everything worked out of the box (webcam, hibernation, most of special keys), I thought it was time to try it on the U810.
The install went OK, didn't need the acpi/pnp boot hacks to get wired ethernet working, the ath5K drivers worked reasonably well (if still a bit slow). Startup and shutdown were snappier than before and the KDE 4.3 3D desktop effects work fast enough (and are better integrated than compiz+KDE 3).
However, there are a couple of show stoppers:
The install went OK, didn't need the acpi/pnp boot hacks to get wired ethernet working, the ath5K drivers worked reasonably well (if still a bit slow). Startup and shutdown were snappier than before and the KDE 4.3 3D desktop effects work fast enough (and are better integrated than compiz+KDE 3).
However, there are a couple of show stoppers:
- Suspend and hibernate crash hard (power cycle hard) when there are SD/CF cards inserted. This appears (after a bit of digging) to be the eject action during shutdown. The only fix is to not do this which makes me uneasy about filesystem integrity and breaks automatic remounting on awakening.
- Webcam driver has been dropped as a separate driver pending inclusion in the uvcvideo core drivers - unfortunately this doesn't work yet.
Saturday, 1 May 2010
Toshiba NB100
I've just acquired a Toshiba NB100 - it was cheap. OpenSuse 11.2 went on quite easily and seems to work quite well though I have not tested it thoroughly yet. I took the plunge with KDE 4.4 and it seems to be quite nice now - the whole things starts up quickly and 3D effects work well (better integrated than KDE 3.5 + Compiz) though wobbly windows aren't quite as nifty as compiz. I find the desktop plane/expo features invaluable working on a small screen.
Good Points:
Upgradable to 2GB RAM
Network and VGA ports on the back of the unit
Opens flat
Dismantled it to put in a bigger HDD - it seems well built
- Big plate dissipates heat across the back of the keyboard keeping it cool and thus quiet
Three full size USB ports
Not so good points:
Case has to be opened to get at anything other than the RAM - and it's a fairly major operation
...in particular, swapping hard drives is a big dismantling job
No obvious spare ports/pads inside for easy modding
Battery sticks out at the back - but that does stop it tipping when the screen's right back
Good Points:
Upgradable to 2GB RAM
Network and VGA ports on the back of the unit
Opens flat
Dismantled it to put in a bigger HDD - it seems well built
- Big plate dissipates heat across the back of the keyboard keeping it cool and thus quiet
Three full size USB ports
Not so good points:
Case has to be opened to get at anything other than the RAM - and it's a fairly major operation
...in particular, swapping hard drives is a big dismantling job
No obvious spare ports/pads inside for easy modding
Battery sticks out at the back - but that does stop it tipping when the screen's right back
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