[Server-devel] small form factor XS options?
I am shopping for some XS options to test out ahead of our spring deployment. I have looked at the MSI Wind PC, Eee Box, and the Shuttle X2700N. All have nice small form factors, low prices, and Atom chips. I am focused on Intel Atom-based PC's because they seem to be dropping in price the fastest and there are a number of different vendors selling atom-based pc's. Also, they are low-power. MSI Wind PC - cheap at roughly $350 w/ 1.6 Ghz processor and 1 GB RAM CON: looks like it has poor cooling and some customers complain it gets quite hot. Eee Box - more expensive but doesn't seem to have the same cooling problem Shuttle X2700N - slightly more expensive than the MSI at $200 but looks to have much better cooling. I can't find any customer reviews on it. Unfortunately, none of these have a spare PCI slot that I can use for the XS's 2nd NIC card. We are considering using a USB NIC for the eth1. Does anyone know of similar small form factor PC's that do have an extra PCI slot? Or other good XS choices? -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] small form factor XS options?
On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 9:11 AM, Bryan Berry [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am shopping for some XS options to test out ahead of our spring deployment. Good idea! I have looked at the MSI Wind PC, Eee Box, and the Shuttle X2700N. All have nice small form factors, low prices, and Atom chips. I am focused on Intel Atom-based PC's because they seem to be dropping in price the fastest and there are a number of different vendors selling atom-based pc's. Also, they are low-power. If you look for machines with VIA CPUs, they are low power dissipation, and often cheap too. We have a few samples at 1cc with heatsinks - no fans! Eee Box - more expensive but doesn't seem to have the same cooling problem I talked with Asus engineers who assured there's a version of it with no fans, and a heatsink. Not sure if it's in the catalog though :-/ Unfortunately, none of these have a spare PCI slot that I can use for the XS's 2nd NIC card. We are considering using a USB NIC for the eth1. That'll hurt if you have significant traffic. In fact, I'd recommend using the usb nic for eth0 which is guaranteed to have less traffic ;-) Does anyone know of similar small form factor PC's that do have an extra PCI slot? Or other good XS choices? Small form factor gets you into hard-to-cool-down devices. Can you handle a large box with a good heatsink? The dusty humid env you describe in Nepal there is going to murder fans quickly... cheers, m -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- School Server Architect - 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] Installing XS on server for School District need some help
I didn't mean to reply just to you, I put everyone back on the cc. Ok that all sounds good, when we get back from break on Monday we will give the 0.5 a shot. As for the network, we have a meeting set up with our HP vendor and our cabling company to do a site survey on the 9th. We currently have all HP Procurve switches and will be using their Wireless AP's and controller. Thanks for the advice I will be sure to mention that when we meet. FYI the 1100 XO's will be split up into 3 buildings on the West Campus, so that will make it a little easier for placing our AP's since they are not all condensed into 1 building. Over the winter break we will try to squeeze in setting up the first building, so when the kids return they will be ready to go. That should give us a chance to work out all the bugs with only 325 XO's online. From: Martin Langhoff [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 2008 5:29 PM To: Josh Totoro Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Installing XS on server for School District need some help You replied only to me -- was this on purpose or accidental? If on purpose, do forward this bit of conversation to the public list :-) On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 7:40 PM, Josh Totoro [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Thanks for your reply, I actually had the .4 version so I am dl-ing the .5 now Good start :-) The installer was not able to see the disks at all(I think) so I will try what you suggested. I am almost positive that the raid card is ok since the windows was running fine before I tried the XS install. Some raid cards might have drivers for Windows in the standard Windows install media, and yet they don't have drivers on the stock standard Linux install disks. Dell is getting better at picking hw with good drivers for all OSs... You said it is tricky to set up multiple XS servers. We currently have 2 campuses running on separate subnets connected by 2 t-1's with point to point routers. We also plan to Vlan all the XO traffic directly to their perspective server do you think this will make it a little easier to set up. As long as they are in separate subnets, they'll be fine. Note that the XS wants to handle its own subnet - handing out dhcp leases and acting as the main router to the WAN/internet, and the XOs expect to be in a network managed by the XS. Have a read through the docs and have a play with the 0.5 release to see what this means. One thing I forgot in my earlier msg was that you'll want a good number of access points to support 1100 machines. We're recommending careful planning on this - a site surve to understand the RF properties of the place, is important. A rough estimate is 1 AP for every 50 laptops if the usage is going to be moderate to high. You also need to consider wiring and switches. cheers, m -Original Message- From: Martin Langhoff [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 2008 4:15 PM To: Josh Totoro Cc: server-devel@lists.laptop.org; Samuel Klein; John F. Hedrick Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Installing XS on server for School District need some help 2008/11/25 Josh Totoro [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Hello, I am a Tech Specialist for a school district in PA. There are 2 of Welcome to the list! Even if there's a bit of developer chatter, this is the place to be. A couple of initial ideas that might help: - Are you using the XS 0.5 installer? If not... do! I's done and released, but I haven't sent out the release announcement formally. This page has all the rght links: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_Release_Notes - The Dell server you have looks plenty! Two things could be going amiss... - One is that the installer has a preset indicating how it will format the drives, and it defaults to overwriting existing Linux partitions, but preserving existing Windows partitions. So when it offers the how to partition the drive dialogue, go in and tell it to nuke Windows. - Second - some hardware raid cards don't have drivers built in into Linux. That can be a bit of a pain -- if that's the case, the installer won't find any disk to list. If you think that that's the problem, the fix is to figure out what the exact model of card it is (if possible drill down to exact chipset), and how to get it going with Fedora 9. If the issue is with the RAID card, it might be a better idea to play with the desktop machines in the meantime. Or plug a simple PCI SCSI card, or even a SATA card in there (you'll need SATA disks...) We plan to have 1500+ XO's on our schools network in the coming year, what specs would you recommend for the servers? We were planning to have 1 server on each campus, and about 1100+ XO's on the West and 400 on the East. Can 1 server handle 1100+ XO's if it has top of the line specs? Cool - we're starting to use (and tune) the XS in scenarios with many laptops. In fact, this development cycle (from now to new year) is focused on exactly
Re: [Server-devel] small form factor XS options?
Hi Bryan, That's exactly what we are looking for, here at OLPC France: that is compact, rugged and low power hardware platforms! Note that it's a work in progress! So far, we experimented bit 3 targets: * the Bubba Two server: powered by a PowerPC/Freescale processor, from Excito (Sverige) (http://www.excito.com) * the Fuloong Mini box, powered by a Mips processor, from Lemote Tech (China) (http://www.lemote.com) * the EEEPC 1000H netbook, powered by an Atom (Intel) processor, from ASUSTek (Taïwan) (http://www.asus.com) We had tested those platforms on ou last CodeCamp. The report (in French) is available here: http://www.olpc-france.org/wiki/index.php?title=Compte-rendu_CodeCamp Best regards, Samy Quoting Bryan Berry [EMAIL PROTECTED]: I am shopping for some XS options to test out ahead of our spring deployment. I have looked at the MSI Wind PC, Eee Box, and the Shuttle X2700N. All have nice small form factors, low prices, and Atom chips. I am focused on Intel Atom-based PC's because they seem to be dropping in price the fastest and there are a number of different vendors selling atom-based pc's. Also, they are low-power. MSI Wind PC - cheap at roughly $350 w/ 1.6 Ghz processor and 1 GB RAM CON: looks like it has poor cooling and some customers complain it gets quite hot. Eee Box - more expensive but doesn't seem to have the same cooling problem Shuttle X2700N - slightly more expensive than the MSI at $200 but looks to have much better cooling. I can't find any customer reviews on it. Unfortunately, none of these have a spare PCI slot that I can use for the XS's 2nd NIC card. We are considering using a USB NIC for the eth1. Does anyone know of similar small form factor PC's that do have an extra PCI slot? Or other good XS choices? -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ 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] small form factor XS options?
On Wed, 2008-11-26 at 09:39 -0200, If you look for machines with VIA CPUs, they are low power dissipation, and often cheap too. We have a few samples at 1cc with heatsinks - no fans! Will do, tks for the heads up I definitely need at least 1 Ghz processor because we intend to host an offline E-Library on the XS. Even w/out the E-Library we want to host a lot of content cached from the broader Internet and that will require a good bit of RAM and some CPU. I have looked at the Excito and they are impressive but do not offer a fast enough processor and the price is higher than I would like. Eee Box - more expensive but doesn't seem to have the same cooling problem I talked with Asus engineers who assured there's a version of it with no fans, and a heatsink. Not sure if it's in the catalog though :-/ Unfortunately, none of these have a spare PCI slot that I can use for the XS's 2nd NIC card. We are considering using a USB NIC for the eth1. That'll hurt if you have significant traffic. In fact, I'd recommend using the usb nic for eth0 which is guaranteed to have less traffic ;-) Does anyone know of similar small form factor PC's that do have an extra PCI slot? Or other good XS choices? This is very true. Small form factor isn't actually that important. Low-Power is much more important. I have to say I am still leaning towards the Shuttle X2700N. It seems to have adequate cooling features compared to other small form-factor PCs Perhaps my best option would be to purchase an Atom CPU, appropriate motherboard, and fit into a regular PC chassis . . . But I still haven't checked out the Via CPU options ;) -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] [sugar] notes on 8.2.0, specifically 767 (was 8.2.1)
Bryan, As you requested I ran $ olpc-netstatus and get gabble returned as one of the values. /Robert H. On Nov 26, 2008, at 6:41 PM, Bryan Berry wrote: Were you able to register properly w/ XS and were you able to connect to ejabberd? The best way to check is to run $ olpc-netstatus from the terminal You should see gabble listed and not salut If you only see salut you are not connected to ejabberd On Wed, 2008-11-26 at 18:33 -0800, Robert Howard wrote: I have had no trouble connecting both 767 and 656 to the XS .4 that anna is running. We have tested all sorts of activities using collaboration via the .4 XS. On Nov 26, 2008, at 8:22 AM, Martin Langhoff wrote: On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 1:07 PM, Greg Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: * 767 can't connect to ejabberd on XS 0.4 because they use incompatible versions of GNU TLS. H. All the XO 8.2 testing has been done againstXS 0.4 so categorically we can assert: vanilla 767 interoperates with vanilla XS 0.4 just fine. If you are seeing a problem, it's probably worthwhile to diagnose with the fine crowd at [EMAIL PROTECTED] :-) btw, it seems that this list is getting shut down - move discussion to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and [EMAIL PROTECTED] ? cheers, martin -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Sugar mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Sugar mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] OLPC XS 0.5 Released
Martin, can u provide and .md5 for this and future releases? thanks -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Mini ejabberd workplan notes...
Guillaume: I hope to soon rebase ejabberd off 2.0.2. Would be good as Gadget requires at least this version to work properly. Well, it seems to work, though I have run out of time to really be sure. http://dev.laptop.org/git?p=users/dbagnall/ejabberd-rpm.git;a=summary http://dev.laptop.org/~dbagnall/ejabberd-xs-2.0.2-2.fc9.olpc.i386.rpm There are a mixture of our old patches and new ones from Fedora's package. I got rid of ejabberd.cfg, since xs-config now redirects to its own one via /etc/sysconfig/ejabberd. Douglas ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
