CompuLab Fit-PC3
Service Setup (Jacinth)

Steps in setup:

• Open the box, check contents, record serial numbers.

• Install the hard disc.

• Set it up with monitor, keyboard, mouse, external disc.

• BIOS setup (power it on while holding down F2). It turns out that the splash screen stays up for 6 secs, during which you can hit F2. Try to discover the wired, wireless and Bluetooth MAC addresses. These items were changed:

  • This is Phoenix BIOS SecureCore Tiano v2.1
  • BIOS version SBC_2.1.0.333_13 X64 (2013-01-09)
  • L2 cache 1Mb
  • Memory mode: dual interleaved
  • Watchdog timer is disabled by default, 4 mins timeout is default. There is a Linux driver for this watchdog: sp5100_tco.
  • SATA type: AHCI is the default (vs. IDE)
  • AC (power) loss: changed to Last State, default is Power On. Bad move: if it shuts down voluntarily when the UPS battery runs low, the Last State is Off, and it stays off when power returns. Reverted to Power On and successfully tested. This setting is in AMD-Chipset-AC Loss.
  • Boot order unchanged: USB CD, hard disc 0, interleaved with discs we don't have, and LAN at the end.
  • BIOS Setup does not display the MAC addresses, too bad.

• Power management checkout. (Actually this was done after all other setup was finished.) This machine is a fit-PC3 Pro with the AMD G-T56N processor: higher power than for Iris. Power used in various activities:

  • Power off: 0W
  • BIOS setup: 21W
  • Memory tester memtest86+: 26W
  • Grub: 23W
  • When booting: 19 to 29W
  • Simple benchmark, 1 core (speedsha): 25W
  • Simple benchmark, 2 cores (wastetime): 29W
  • When idle: 19W (!)
  • External USB cooling fan: 1W (included in all above numbers)

• Diamond (the machine hosting the local mirror of the OpenSuSE distro) will not deliver content unless Orion's wired MAC address is in the firewall list. Set this up; find the MAC address from Diamond's firewall log.

• Install SuSE 12.3 x86_64. Minimal X-Windows packages. (Later, post_jump will install the desktop environments etc. etc.) Standard partitioning with volume labels:

  • sda nominal size 500Gb, actual minus overhead is 466Gb
  • sda1 jacinth-root 20Gb
  • sda2 jacinth-swap 8Gb
  • sda3 jacinth-home 150Gb (presently 44Gb used)
  • sda4 extended area 322Gb (approx), actually 288Gb
  • sda5 jacinth-s1 150Gb (for special projects)
  • sda6 jacinth-s2 172Gb (approx), actually 138Gb

• At this point I should be able to log in and discover the MAC addresses. Assign them in the firewall and IPv6 and push to all hosts. Using hostname of Orion, not Jacinth. Accomplished for the wired Ethernet but there is no driver for the wireless, so no info about the MAC address.

• Check on Jacinth that the list of extra wanted packages /m1/custom/extra.sel is up to date (it isn't), fix, then copy it to Orion. Run post_jump. This installs all the wanted software packages including XFCE desktop environment, and takes updates into account, plus runs online update for the previously installed packages. Watch out for special software that's available for i586 (old Jacinth) but missing for x86_64 (Orion).

• Bulk comparison of /etc on Jacinth and on Orion. Propagate missing config files, edit discrepant ones.

• Copy everything in jacinth:/home onto Orion.

• Bulk copy some /var/lib directories to Orion. Make sure the various daemons are not running, and reboot afterward.

  ssync -a -x cronj dhcp dhcp6 dhcpv6 dovecot icecast kerberos ldap named ooba pgsql prosody sogo squirrelmail orion://var/lib/

  ssync is my wrapper for rsync that provides --rsh=ssh and a more readable log format. -x means do not cross to another filesystem; /proc is mounted within /var/lib/named.

  pgsql has to be handled specially after copying due to 32/64bit issues, see below.

• Start going through services one by one. Turn them on, make them work.