>
> - is anybody else on this list interested
> in my notes on how I am doing this? I can put a write-up on my
> wiki if so, otherwise I may forget some of what I did.
>
I think this would be very useful. I imagine many people would be
interested in lower power, lower footprint applications.
We recently needed a small PC for a slow monitoring application, and ended
up getting an Asus Eee PC 1000 HD mini notebook. An SBD like the ALIX 2D3
would have been another option, but we liked that the Eee came with its own
monitor, hard drive, and integrated "uninterruptible power supply" (i.e.,
batteries). We just got it yesterday, still trying to figure out whether to
stick with the preinstalled Xandros OS or try installing SL instead.
Cheers,
Glenn
On Tue, Jan 6, 2009 at 12:45 AM, Keith Lofstrom <[email protected]> wrote:
> I have been using an old laptop as my firewall - running SL5
> like all my other computers.
>
> I recently purchased an ALIX 2D3 single board computer ( designed
> by PC Engines of Switzerland, http://www.pcengines.ch/alix2d3.htm
> and sold by netgate.com for $180 with case and power supply).
> The board has 3 ethernet ports ( WAN, LAN, DMZ ), 256MB of RAM,
> and uses a 500MHz AMD Geode X86-compatible processor with
> built-in AES crypto engine (for speeding up VPN links). It uses
> a Compact Flash card for "disk" though it also has a header that
> can connect to a PATA hard drive. No video display, though there
> are USB connectors and a mini-PCI slot on the board where a
> display card can be added.
>
> The board draws less than 4 watts operating. So it is about 3X
> faster than the old laptop, and 10x less power. Some people are
> setting these up with the OpenWRT distro, but that is optimized
> for small flash footprint, and has too many bugs IMHO. I tried
> that for a few frustrating days, and gave up.
>
> I attached the CF card to a USB adapter, attached that to a
> diskless desktop computer, and installed from the SL5 DVD. After
> tweaking /etc/fstab , /boot/grub/menu.lst , and /etc/inittab for
> a serial console and different drive names, the card booted fine
> on the ALIX. I made some flash-friendly changes (noatime, remote
> logging, ramdisk /tmp, etc). I also added a rc file to copy the
> MAC address of my old WAN connection. I am moving the config
> files from the old firewall laptop now, and will deploy soon.
>
> Which raises a question - is anybody else on this list interested
> in my notes on how I am doing this? I can put a write-up on my
> wiki if so, otherwise I may forget some of what I did.
>
> With SL5 driving massive computation clusters consuming megawatts
> at the high end of the spectrum, it is nice to know that SL5 is
> also useful at the low power end, too.
>
> Keith
>
> --
> Keith Lofstrom [email protected] Voice (503)-520-1993
> KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
> Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs
>
>
