[App_rpt-users] Fun with Limey and HP T5710 so far

[Benjamin L. Naber]

Limey Linux will only work on a few mini-ITX boards. I was lucky that I
got mine running on a Neoware CA-22. However, the VIA version did not
work, so I used the i686 version. Booted up just fine.

I have noticed I've had plenty trouble with the HP thin clients with
other Linux distros for embedded machines. The older Neowares seem to
run much better, and faster. I'd like to provide an answer for that, but
I honestly don't have a clue why.

DO NOT TRY TO RUN ACID ON A THUMB DRIVE!!!

Limey linux, when booted, loads a compresses image to RAM, then
decompresses it. Limey Linux runs from RAM. ACiD does not. If you try
it, not only will ACiD be slow to boot on a thumb drive, the thumb drive
will die because of all the read/write cycles that are meant for a
spinning hard drive. An allstar user/node owner in Pennsylvania reported
the slow booting.

When dd'ing to flash drive, for most cases you want to specify bs=16k at
the end of the line. You may even try "gunzip -c <.img> | of=/dev/sdx
bs=16k". That is the line I used on DamnSmallLinux console to burn the
Limey Linux image file to the neoware's flash drive. There is zero need
to run cfdisk or any of that mess before hand.

If I remember right, svcfg is located in the /usr/bin, or the /usr/sbin
directory. If it is in one of those two and you cannot do a svcfg from
the prompt, chances are a path got screwed up somewhere. At the prompt,
you might be able to do /usr/sbin/svcfg and that should work.

If you want to try running ACiD on thin client, my best advice is to get
a USB hard drive, and run it from there. You may have to play around
with the formating on the USB hard drive for it to work correctly. Some
BIOSs do not like anything other than VFAT or NTFS for booting purposes.
You may be able to make a double partition and and have VFAT for
booting, and ext3 for anything else. Have fun with grub or lilo to make
sure it boots from the correct partition.

If you really want to get crazy with it, use of of your Linux servers as
a PXE boot server, and have the thin client load the Limey Linux from
there. Not sure how well save would work though.....

~Benjamin, KB9LFZ
allstar node 28569


On Thu, 2013-02-21 at 08:51 -0800, Tony KT9AC wrote:
> Here are some notes from my first attempt to get Limey up and running
> on a T5710 Thin Client (1.2Ghz Transmeta Efferon, 512MB flash chip
> board (not drive) and 512MB ram - PM705AA model).
> 
> 
> It's not as easy as the Drupal page would lead one to believe...Limey
> is actually ArchLinux and not CentOS like the ACID install is, so a
> lot of expected stuff doesn't work. I'm comfortable with Linux and
> willing to work through this, and perhaps a small group could write up
> their experiences with this tier of hardware on the Drupal site.
> 
> 
> Notes:
>       * Downloaded PenDrive and Ubuntu server ISO to make a bootable
>         4GB USB drive (this allowed persistent storage of the cfimg
>         files under the /cdrom/doc folder).
>       * Booted into USB Rescue and ran fdisk to delete two Windows
>         partitions off of 512MB flash.
>       * Ran the "dd if=cfimg-1.1.5 of=/dev/sdb" and wrote out 128MB
>         image just fine.
>       * Rebooted 5710 and it stuck at "USB Hub detected". Inserted
>         above USB drive and it proceeded to a login prompt. It does
>         not see the URI at this point. Tried the 1.1.4 and 1.1.5
>         version for VIA here. Tried the i686-1.1.5 version and it
>         didn't even get this far.
>       * No "This is your first time..." script ran like the Drupal
>         page says. No eth0 came up either.
>       * Found out Limey is actually "Archlinux" and found the commands
>         to get on the internet.
>       * Ran "ip link set <ip> dev eth0 up" and "ip addr add
>         <ip/netmask/> dev eth0"
>       * Was able to ping my default gateway and then
>         edit /etc/resolv.conf to add "nameserver 8.8.8.8".
>       * How does one save changes back to the flash? The "svcfg"
>         doesn't seem to exist...
>       * Once on the network, I switched to /usr/src and ran "getsrc"
>         which downloaded Asterisk. I tried to do a "configure" but
>         that failed. Read the README and did a usbradio_install but
>         that also failed.
>       * This is a *really* stripped down version of Linux that uses
>         128MB of memory after installed. I am comfortable around Linux
>         and CentOS and realize Limey isn't a beginner's O/S, one that
>         I'm willing to work through.
>       * I might buy an 8GB USB drive and use that with a regular ACID
>         install to get more functionality as a try of Ubuntu Server
>         didn't have enough disk for an install (it did find all the
>         devices just fine under Rescue mode since it's a newer
>         distro), or perhaps CentOS 6.3 and roll my own compile of
>         Allstar.
> 
> 
> Comments/suggestions are welcome!
> Thanks,
> Tony
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> App_rpt-users mailing list
> App_rpt-users at ohnosec.org
> http://ohnosec.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/app_rpt-users