Otter

Otter is a Toshiba Magnia SG-20.

History

03-2007-- I've had it for several years now. I used it with the stock Redhat 7.2 for about a year, then shut it down for a while. When I started writing this page, I did most of the upgrades described here.

Hardware

It had two 30 GB drives when I got it. I replaced the second hard drive with an 80 GB leftover from a laptop upgrade.

I pulled a 512MB PC133 DIMM out of a computer that I got dumpster diving, it works fine. It's not ECC, so I had to hookup an AGP video card and keyboard and turn off ECC in BIOS. While I was in there I set it to boot from the network. I can boot into Trinity Rescue Kit via PXEboot from a Linux desktop system.

The stock power supply fan was too noisy, so I hacked out the case a bit for more air flow. Then I put a 80 mm fan on top of the power supply and run it at a low speed.

The 30 GB drive is a Toshiba MK3017. The 80 GB drive is a MHV2080AT.

Software

Boot from network

You can bypass the hard drive and boot your Magnia from another server on your network. It's not easy, as you have to get BIOS access to switch it on, but once it's set it's set forever.

If you try "PXEboot", you need to set the network adapter in the Magnia to use LAN for booting and you need to use the WAN network port. It's an Intel Etherpro 100. The SG-20 will netboot off any of the other network ports; not the etherswitch LAN ports nor the wireless card if you have one.

I used the "Trinity Rescue Kit", build 279 and was able to ssh into the Magnia. I hacked the TRK startup scripts to allow this; by default it will require entering a new root password from the Magnia console (which is not hooked up, that's the whole point of the netboot.)

Having network booting means that I have another option when the system won't boot from its internal drives. I can netboot, then use ssh to log into the machine and see what happened when it booted, see if it properly detected the hard drives and peripherals and so on.

For example, right now my Magnia is not bootable from the hard drive but I can see this by typing 'dmesg' after booting with TRK.

Probing IDE interface ide0...
hda: TOSHIBA MK3017GAP, ATA DISK drive
hdb: FUJITSU MHV2080AT, ATA DISK drive

This means that it's seeing both drives; I had to change the jumpers on the 80 GB drive from Master to CSEL (cable select) mode by adding a jumper before the Magnia could see it. I just added this drive from a laptop that I upgraded.

Using the TRK, I can mount /dev/hda1 (where I installed Ubuntu) and edit critical system files. The problem turned out to be in the configuration of the network interfaces. I installed Ubuntu onto the 30 GB drive using a VMWare virtual machine and it set up the ethernet interface wrong.

It was finding the network card as '/dev/eth2' instead of '/dev/eth0' so it was not working.

Boot from hard drive

As I mentioned above I did install Ubuntu 6.10 Server onto my Magnia, and it's running now.

The big deal with operating system upgrades on the Magnia's is the fan control for the CPU and System fans. Without the proper control software, the fans stay on all the time.

I tried installing Debian on it a couple times but then decided I did not want to go with either the Stable (= OLD) or Unstable editions for this server. Ubuntu is closer to the head of the tree for software releases, and the desktop edition is running on two other machines that I use here at home. So Ubuntu it is.

Set up for image

hda1 3.0 GB /     ext3   The root filesystem
hda2 3.0 GB       ext3   Alternate root partition for later upgrades
hda3 ext
hda5 500 MB       SWAP
hda6              The rest

I am not mounting the other filesystems right now, to make it easier for you to customize or install onto drives of other sizes.

My installation includes the options for DNS and LAMP services. DHCP is turned on. So is ssh.

Usernames and passwords:

root / admin
sshuser / user

I suggest you bring the system up disconnected from the Internet, and change these passwords before connecting it. Connect via ssh and use the command

sudo passwd sshuser
sudo passwd root

If you need an ssh client for Windows, I recommend 'putty'.

Other packages that I added

I enabled the 'universe' packages by uncommenting the appropriate line in /etc/apt/sources.list then I added

• emacs21-nox emacs text editor
• xfsprogs tools for xfs filesystems

I recommend the use of the XFS filesystem over EXT3 for large (> 1 GB) partitions. I keep the root filesystem on EXT3 because it makes things easier when using recovery tools.

Add ons

The 'lcd' program is available in source code form from the SG-20 group area on groups.yahoo.com. I compiled and installed it, now I get proper readings on the lcd display. THANKS Hans-Michael and Eric! It use lm-sensors and smartmonctl.

The lm-sensors package adds the ability to read the system sensors. The standard Ubuntu 2.6 kernel + lm-sensors will give you output like this:

# sensors
via686a-isa-6000
Adapter: ISA adapter
CPU core:  +1.76 V  (min =  +0.06 V, max =  +3.10 V)   
+2.5V:     +2.48 V  (min =  +2.36 V, max =  +2.61 V)   
I/O:       +3.36 V  (min =  +3.12 V, max =  +3.45 V)   
+5V:       +5.03 V  (min =  +4.73 V, max =  +5.20 V)   
+12V:     +11.59 V  (min = +11.35 V, max = +12.48 V)   
CPU Fan:  5720 RPM  (min =    0 RPM, div = 2)          
P/S Fan:  5578 RPM  (min =    0 RPM, div = 2)          
SYS Temp:  +15.6°C  (high =  +146°C, hyst =  +133°C)   
CPU Temp:  +16.2°C  (high =  +146°C, hyst =  +133°C)   
SBr Temp:  +24.8°C  (high =  +141°C, hyst =   +54°C)

The smartmontools package talks to the hard disk drives, and can get the drive temperature if the drive has a sensor. I have two drives, the Toshiba drive does not have any sensor but the newer Fujitsu drive does.

cacti uses rrdtool to record readings from network gear and from lm-sensors. To install these you have to uncomment the lines allowing access to the 'universe' in /etc/apt/sources.list. (Remember to do 'apt-get update' after editing the sources.list file.)

mysql username and password: root/admin (set with "mysqladmin password admin") cacti username and password: admin/cacti

I installed phpmyadmin to assist with management of the mysql database server.