I think it's time we put an lguest kernel in flash, and show the world how free software does virtualization.
This is a much simpler task than putting (e.g.) kvm in flash, as the helper for kvm (qemu) is pretty heavy: close to 4MB, whereas the lguest program which runs guests is a mere (!) 600K. And, unless we care about windows (I don't), we don't really need what kvm does.
But we're going to need 2 mbyte flash parts. I need a little guidance here, probably from Ward. I want to buy a kick-ass(TM) mainboard which runs LB, is supported by buildrom, and will support 2MB flash parts. I want to buy the package from (e.g.) newegg. This will be a wiki entry when I'm done.
So: - what board? - where do I buy the flash parts - I need a nice quiet case. Any suggestions? - I assume just about any old disk will do. - any favorite video card? Cheap is better.
thanks
ron
On 10/26/07, ron minnich rminnich@gmail.com wrote:
I think it's time we put an lguest kernel in flash, and show the world how free software does virtualization.
Fantastic! I've been drooling over half-formed fantasies of virtual+LB for a while.
- I need a nice quiet case. Any suggestions?
I may not be fully qualified for -any- other part of this discussion, but I can speak to this. What size board are you looking at? MiniITX? MicroATX? ATX? E-ATX?
My initial hunch would be to select a nice-looking silent case that is in the ~$100 range, comes with a decent (clean, quiet) power-supply, and will take anything smaller than a standard ATX (20 or 24-pin) board.
-dhbarr.
-Ron For a quite case I would advise any thing from Lian-LI. I like these cases. All the edges are sanded so you dont cut your self up, when trying to work inside. They are also VERY quite. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112099
For a quite power supply, try this. No moving parts. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817104035
For that cheap, good graphics card, try this. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121085 -Adam
David H. Barr wrote:
On 10/26/07, ron minnich rminnich@gmail.com wrote:
I think it's time we put an lguest kernel in flash, and show the world how free software does virtualization.
Fantastic! I've been drooling over half-formed fantasies of virtual+LB for a while.
- I need a nice quiet case. Any suggestions?
I may not be fully qualified for -any- other part of this discussion, but I can speak to this. What size board are you looking at? MiniITX? MicroATX? ATX? E-ATX?
My initial hunch would be to select a nice-looking silent case that is in the ~$100 range, comes with a decent (clean, quiet) power-supply, and will take anything smaller than a standard ATX (20 or 24-pin) board.
-dhbarr.
On Fri, Oct 26, 2007 at 10:29:23AM -0700, ron minnich wrote:
I think it's time we put an lguest kernel in flash, and show the world how free software does virtualization.
Yes!
This is a much simpler task than putting (e.g.) kvm in flash, as the helper for kvm (qemu) is pretty heavy: close to 4MB, whereas the lguest program which runs guests is a mere (!) 600K. And, unless we care about windows (I don't), we don't really need what kvm does.
But we're going to need 2 mbyte flash parts. I need a little guidance here, probably from Ward.
We squeeze lb + kernel with tiny patches (network but no usb) + small initrd into 1MB. With 2MB, there should be a lot of space, enough for 600K of lguest software. Is that a statically compiled copy of the lguest program, by the way?
That should leave about 400K for other stuff - how big is the lg kernel module? I guess you could pull that off disk if necessary. Perhaps a 4MB flash part would be nicer...
I want to buy a kick-ass(TM) mainboard which runs LB, is supported by buildrom, and will support 2MB flash parts. I want to buy the package from (e.g.) newegg. This will be a wiki entry when I'm done.
So:
- what board?
How about that new mini-dtx gigabyte board that the SIS folks contributed code for?
Alternatively, the gigabyte m57sli-s4; but as Torsten pointed out today there are some issues still with PCI and PCI-E (interrupts) on that board. No acpi yet either. But it's not so hard to add a second SOIC/SPI chip on the free pads on the board - we have verified instructions (thanks Peter!). We can burn SPI chips now on this board thanks to Carl-Daniels work. The board is really very nice with 6 SATA ports and lots of bells and whistles.
Uwe also added support another MCP55-based board - the MSI K9N Neo, but I think that one is hard to find now.
In any case we'll have to figure out what the largest flash part is that can be addressed by the board.
- where do I buy the flash parts
Good question. SOIC/SPI parts seem to be a bit harder to source, I've done some preliminary looking but have yet to buy some chips for the m57sli-s4 v2. Mouser?
- I need a nice quiet case. Any suggestions?
- I assume just about any old disk will do.
- any favorite video card? Cheap is better.
Any $30 or so ATI card should be fine if you're not interested in super graphics performance; the free accelerated drivers should appear sometime soon-ish...
Didn't that mini-dtx board have onboard vga? Even cheap discrete video cards draw way too much power for my taste these days, if you're not interested in 3D acceleration.
Thanks, Ward.
On 10/26/07, Ward Vandewege ward@gnu.org wrote:
How about that new mini-dtx gigabyte board that the SIS folks contributed code for?
well, we have not pulled that in, I am worried that morgan got discouraged with us.
I really want a board we can do this with with ZERO mods.
What fits that requirement?
ron
On Fri, Oct 26, 2007 at 04:33:02PM -0700, ron minnich wrote:
I really want a board we can do this with with ZERO mods.
What fits that requirement?
MSI MS-7260 (K9N Neo), pretty much everything works fine, and it has a socketed PLCC.
http://linuxbios.org/MSI_MS-7260_Build_Tutorial
Except for the floppy (which I'm working on to fix), all parts I've tested so far work fine.
Be careful not to confuse it with other boards with K9N in the name, I don't know if those work or have socketed PLCC (e.g. there's K9N-F, K9N Neo2-F etc).
Uwe.
what memory part are you using that works?
I'm ordering now :-)
ron
On Sat, Oct 27, 2007 at 09:04:50AM -0700, ron minnich wrote:
what memory part are you using that works?
Samsung DDR2 667 512MB, but it shouldn't really matter much. I have not yet done more tests with different combinations, but I _do_ know that one DIMM only (in the first slot) works fine.
Where are you ordering? Maybe we should add a link in the wiki, there weren't many shops which still had it in stock when I looked last time.
Uwe.
On 27.10.2007 00:51, Ward Vandewege wrote:
On Fri, Oct 26, 2007 at 10:29:23AM -0700, ron minnich wrote:
I think it's time we put an lguest kernel in flash, and show the world how free software does virtualization.
Yes!
Indeed.
I want to buy a kick-ass(TM) mainboard which runs LB, is supported by buildrom, and will support 2MB flash parts. I want to buy the package from (e.g.) newegg. This will be a wiki entry when I'm done.
So:
- what board?
How about that new mini-dtx gigabyte board that the SIS folks contributed code for?
Not sure whether it supports SATA2. The board is not released yet and the barebone Shuttle SS21T (same chipset, different board) got less than stellar reviews for VGA output quality.
Alternatively, the gigabyte m57sli-s4; but as Torsten pointed out today there are some issues still with PCI and PCI-E (interrupts) on that board. No acpi yet either. But it's not so hard to add a second SOIC/SPI chip on the free pads on the board - we have verified instructions (thanks Peter!). We can burn SPI chips now on this board thanks to Carl-Daniels work. The board is really very nice with 6 SATA ports and lots of bells and whistles.
AFAIK there are even more pitfalls like Firewire etc.
I should verify my list of issues with the current M57SLI code and go over each one to see it's fixed.
- any favorite video card? Cheap is better.
Any $30 or so ATI card should be fine if you're not interested in super graphics performance; the free accelerated drivers should appear sometime soon-ish...
We are talking about 6+ months from now for a well-working 3D driver for R5xx cards according to sources in the Xorg camp. 3D drivers for earlier cards are still further away. And $30 cards probably won't be R5xx.
Didn't that mini-dtx board have onboard vga? Even cheap discrete video cards draw way too much power for my taste these days, if you're not interested in 3D acceleration.
I'd like a board with onboard DVI connector. That gives you nice graphics quality and can do both analog and digital monitor connections. Unfortunately, all chipsets supporting that (Nvidia Geforce/ AMD SB600) are unsupported under LB. For the Nvidia chipset, that is unlikely to change because the number of persons with access to the docs hovers around 1 and none of them (ha!) has time to work on it. For the AMD chipset, we can be sure AMD has access to its own data sheets. ;-)
There are some really silent (read: no chipset fan required) and affordable (sub €60) mainboards with AMD 690G/SB600 and a nice feature set on the market. We'll see what gets supported in the future.
Carl-Daniel
hmm, ward and others, it seems there is no answer to the 'what do I buy' question, which is a bit of a problem. What is FSF using nowadays? ron
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Adam Talbot -
Carl-Daniel Hailfinger -
David H. Barr -
ron minnich -
Uwe Hermann -
Ward Vandewege