Ubuntu installation on Magnia SG20

These instructions are my notes on how I installed Ubuntu from scratch onto a hard drive so that I could get Otter (a Toshiba Magnia) running.

If you just want to install the drive image that I built from this system, go back to Otter's page.

Connect hard drive to desktop system

In my case, the system is 8track. I use a ribbon cable and a 44pin laptop to 40 pin desktop IDE adapter. The drive is one of the 30 GB Toshiba 2.5" 4200rpm drives that came in the system when I got it.

Set up virtual machine

I create a VMware workstation virtual machine using the hard drive on /dev/hda and the cdrom connected to an ISO rescue image called "System Rescue CD".

Boot from the System Rescue CD

Use evmns to partition the hard drive and create filesystems. Create two volumes, the first is swap (500MB) the second is /root (3GB).

Putting swap first means that the second partition can easily be expanded to fill all available space. Make a reiser filesystem on /dev/evms/root and a swap filesystem on /dev/evms/swap.

The first two partitions are set up with RAID 1 in 'degraded mode' . This allows easily converting to a RAID mirror system at a future time.

Install Ubuntu

Boot from the Ubuntu Server install cd, use the "manual" option for partitioning, tell it to install Ubuntu into the third partition. Tell it to install LAMP (Apache + MySQL + PHP)

Remove CDROM and reboot.

Add extra repository

Add the repository for webmin, see http://www.webmin.com/ I also commented out the cdrom entry at the start of the file (/etc/apt/sources.list)

Install updates

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get dist-upgrade

Install extra packages

• openssh-server so that you can get shell access remotely
• cupsys so that you can print to an attached printer
• evms evmsn evmsgui evms-bootdebug support for RAID
• mgetty mgetty-fax added to support incoming calls on modem line and faxing
• nfs-kernel-server so I can share files with other Linux boxes
• privoxy web advertising blocker
• postfix mail handler; added but you will need to reconfigure
• openvpn
• lmsensors access to hardware, you want this if you use 'lcd' program

Webmin stuff

• webmin web-based system management utility
• cupsys-client added to allow webmin to do printer management
• shorewall to manage the firewall; shorewall is supported in webmin

X11 stuff

(You probably will want openssh-server if you want to use these.)

• xauth to allow connecting to X11 applications such as synaptic
• oclock to test X11 connections, and for fun, run with "oclock -transparent &"
• synaptic X11 GUI package manager

Removed

Removed the extra kernel

Copy everything to the EVMS volume

I've done this while the system is running but it's better to do it with a rescue cd so that files are not changing while copying takes place. Also you don't have to figure out how to exclude the in-memory filesystems and the device files that are created at boot time.

1. Boot from System Rescue CDROM
2. Mount partitions
3. Perform copy; tar cf - /mnt/old | (cd /mnt/new; tar xpf -)

Make the new partition bootable

Still in the rescue disk...

mkdir /mnt/new
mount /dev/evms/root /mnt/new
cd /mnt/new
mount -o bind /sys /mnt/new/sys
mount -o bind /dev /mnt/new/dev
chroot /mnt/new su -l

You are now running in an environment that looks just like it will when you are done, so you can perform the installation commands now.

1. Edit grub configuration to point at /dev/evms/root
2. Run grub to install it in /dev/hda2
3. Edit /etc/fstab to point at /dev/evms/root and /dev/evms/swap
4. Make a new initrd --

VERSION="2.6.20-16-server"
cd /boot
mv initrd.img-$VERSION initrd.img-$VERSION.old
update-initramfs -k $VERSION -c

1. Edit the /boot/grub/menu.lst file to point root at /dev/evms/root
2. Run 'upgrade-grub' to update the menu.lst entries

Reboot!

Next step is to install the Magnia LCD program.

Network

Ubuntu wants the ethernet switch at /dev/eth0 and the Intel WAN interface at /dev/eth1 So be it. I updated /etc/network/interfaces to match.

The interfaces are configured in /etc/network/interfaces like this:

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The WAN interface (outside)
auto eth1
iface eth1 inet dhcp

# The Ethernet Switch
auto eth9
iface eth0 inet static
  address 192.168.123.101
  netmask 255.255.255.0
  gateway 192.168.123.254

Wireless

Getting the wireless card going requires adding more Ubuntu packages. The pcmcia modules are not installed by default on the server distribution. Also thought I should run the wireless LAN (WLAN) in bridge mode so that it would be as close as possible to the original Magnia configuration.

apt-get install pcmcia-cs bridge-utils

I rebooted after installing these packages and the wireless card was detected. Popping the card out and reinserting it did not bring the interface back online. This is disappointing; I bet there is some other laptop package for Ubuntu. Older Linux systems had a thing called 'hotplug'. The ifplugd package looks most promising. For this initial phase I am assuming anyone with a wifi card will be leaving it plugged in, so I am not going to worry about it; just treat it like a n internal network card. Plug the card in and leave it there while rebooting.

I am using an old Orinoco Silver card. (Supports 802.11b / 11 Mbps only) This card was one of the ones supported on the original SG20 Redhat build. It happens to be the one that I one. The other modules are installed so you should not be restricted to using an Orinoco card any more, but I don't have any others to use for testing at the moment.

I added a line "orinoco-cs" to /etc/modules so that module will be loaded on boot. This caused the ordering of my network interfaces to change. Drat. So I nailed eth0 and eth1 down in /etc/iftab and tried again. /etc/iftab looks like this now:

# WAN interface Intel Etherpro 100
eth0 driver e100

# LAN interface
eth1 driver

By nailing down eth0 and eth1 to the internal network interfaces, the Orinoco card (and any other PCMCIA network card) will come in third place at /dev/eth2.

Personally I generally prefer using an external access point so that I can put it somewhere that it will do the most good, for instance near my laptop. I want to use the PCMCIA slot for a USB adapter. I am only configuring up this Orinoco to help other SG20 users.

All the same I might try replacing the internal MiniPCI modem card with a wifi card someday.

USB

I don't plan to use the WiFi card as described in the previous section. I want to plug a printer in that has only USB, so I bought a USB pcmcia card.

I popped it in and checked the 'dmesg' command and I see

[ 1112.880000] pccard: CardBus card inserted into slot 0
[ 1113.320000] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbfs
[ 1113.320000] usbcore: registered new interface driver hub
[ 1113.330000] usbcore: registered new device driver usb
[ 1113.340000] ohci_hcd: 2006 August 04 USB 1.1 'Open' Host Controller (OHCI) Driver
[ 1113.340000] PCI: Enabling device 0000:02:00.0 (0000 -> 0002)
[ 1113.340000] ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:00.0[A] -> Link [LNKA] -> GSI 12 (level, low) -> IRQ 12
[ 1113.340000] PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:02:00.0 to 64
[ 1113.340000] ohci_hcd 0000:02:00.0: OHCI Host Controller
[ 1113.350000] ohci_hcd 0000:02:00.0: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1
[ 1113.350000] ohci_hcd 0000:02:00.0: irq 12, io mem 0x34000000
[ 1113.440000] usb usb1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[ 1113.440000] hub 1-0:1.0: USB hub found
[ 1113.440000] hub 1-0:1.0: 3 ports detected
[ 1113.550000] PCI: Enabling device 0000:02:00.1 (0000 -> 0002)
[ 1113.550000] ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:00.1[B] -> Link [LNKA] -> GSI 12 (level, low) -> IRQ 12
[ 1113.550000] PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:02:00.1 to 64
[ 1113.550000] ohci_hcd 0000:02:00.1: OHCI Host Controller
[ 1113.550000] ohci_hcd 0000:02:00.1: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 2
[ 1113.550000] ohci_hcd 0000:02:00.1: irq 12, io mem 0x34001000
[ 1113.640000] usb usb2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[ 1113.640000] hub 2-0:1.0: USB hub found
[ 1113.640000] hub 2-0:1.0: 2 ports detected
[ 1113.750000] PCI: Enabling device 0000:02:00.2 (0000 -> 0002)
[ 1113.750000] ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:00.2[C] -> Link [LNKA] -> GSI 12 (level, low) -> IRQ 12
[ 1113.750000] ehci_hcd 0000:02:00.2: EHCI Host Controller
[ 1113.750000] ehci_hcd 0000:02:00.2: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 3
[ 1113.780000] ehci_hcd 0000:02:00.2: irq 12, io mem 0x34002000
[ 1113.780000] ehci_hcd 0000:02:00.2: USB 2.0 started, EHCI 1.00, driver 10 Dec 2004
[ 1113.780000] usb usb3: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[ 1113.780000] hub 3-0:1.0: USB hub found
[ 1113.780000] hub 3-0:1.0: 5 ports detected

HAPPY DAY

I plug in the printer. I run the 'lsusb' command.

# lsusb
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 04a9:10a2 Canon, Inc. 
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000  
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000  
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

Again, happy day. The printer is a Canon Pixma ip4200 so the system can see it. I will try more USB goodies out later. I was thinking that I could put a serial port adapter on there and set up login access, so that I'd have a backdoor the next time I manage to lock myself out with bad firewall rules.