IGEL Thin Client and more Puppy goodness!

[rolf]

Where to start? First, I think, a little back story...

When I was thinking of setting up a PVR to record OTA digital tv with kaffeine, I bought Rudy Hartmann's Rausch Netzwerktechnik Model XXL-USA 1U Rackmount Server for a low-profile, low-power solution, trying to reduce my carbon footprint, be as green as possible....chicks dig it!

Well, that never happened, I put the board in a smallish ATX case, and that turned into a webserver for GF's website, for which I got a lot of help, here, thanks to all read more...

This box is, of course, on 24/7/365.25, electric costs are high and rising, so back to being green, saving some money, hopefully

Something that caught my eye:

Installing Tinycore Linux (v2.7) with Apache and Samba

Introduction
My aim was to create a web server on a Compact-Flash based thin client. read more...

and I was off to the google races.

To make a long story short,

• I found a WinNet VI Thin Client Terminal, sold by timcstern at
• looked at this sexy 4-card pci adapter from Addonics
• decided on a single CF, direct plug-in, right-angle ide adapter from a local company to plug in the 40-pin onboard ide connector, since the pci slot was blocked by the old pc133 simm I happened to have, see pic:
  
  
  see full size

I counted 72 connectors in that laptop-memory-socket-looking-thingy and have had a hell of a time googling for something that fits there. When I look at a lower angle, I think I see a second set of contacts, making it 144-pin, which seems to be a common older laptop memory, relatively readily available. Could someone verify that for me, please, or stop me before I etrans again?

Since Puppy runs completely from memory, it makes for a relatively snappy desktop experience, except for reads, more-so writes to the CF. I have this and this on the way to improve that and because I can't help myself. Really, http://www.lanlesalon.com is very simple, static with nobody knowing it is there, not to mention ugly and I am working on that, too. However, we want to have the presence to try to bolster business in these slow times, a little.

The cf/ide adapter fits tight down over some capacitors; it's powered through a floppy connector on the board and all I had around was this ide power connector splitter. Also on hand was this older Kingston 512M CF card, which I formatted to ext3 on one partition using the whole space. At this point, I need to install an OS onto the flash with my desktop, running Mandriva 2010.2. Puppy Linux has proved very capable for my usage in the past and I had a CD with 4.2 on it. Booted to that livecd and running Puppy's Universal Installer, I was impressed to find a choice to install to CF connected via USB and later to be used in a cf/ide adapter, just the ticket! However, this did not boot for me, back to google.

Amongst many older reports of failure, a large amount of activity around this sort of hardware/os configuration, I wound up following Installing Damn Small Linux (DSL) Using Ubuntu.... Note the typo; unetbootin is in Mandriva contrib. I had downloaded a small version of Puppy (96M), pup-431-small.iso It was a piece of cake to start unetbootin and point it at the iso. Plugged the card back into the Igel, pressed the power button and, bingo-bango, Bob's your uncle:

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I was impressed, again, how Puppy explains almost every configuration step with tips about what to do if something goes wrong: very user friendly. In the picture, I have connected a cable to the router, Puppy "Connect" walks me through dhcp almost automatic setup, and I am downloading/installing Monkey, another web server I might figure out. Again, there are copious messages about what is going on; the picture shows what happens when one clicks on "Test urls" to see if the offered repository servers are online, or not.

Thanks for your support.

[viking60]

Interesting stuff! I am not able to confirm anything (yet). For the moment I have enough digesting the rocket science. I get the puppy part and se the advantage, (Puppy is great),
Monkey looks interesting I have not seen it before.
That is as far as I have come ....
Oh yes I forgot; My wife confirms that reducing the carbon footprint makes men way more atractive. I will stop farting now....(who could have guessed?)

[rolf]

Finally, http://lanlesalon.com is being served from the thin client! Thanks, again, for the help along the way.

I decided on Puppy Linux 4.3.1 due to the hardware being old and limited, making the pup-431-small.iso appear to be a good fit. Next, Phil Daintree has been creating .pets with the lightweight Hiawatha web server and PHP using 'Fast CGI', a lot more Greek, to me, but sounds good. Phil sent me an older LAMP-6.16-5.1.35-5.2.9.pet that was built for the kernel on my choice of Puppy version. There was a lot of thrashing with this alien stuff and, after some days @ google, the Puppy forum, and Hugo Leisink's Hiawatha website, I managed to brutally farmer up an installation of the fairly acceptable existing html code for the Elegant Styling Salon web page onto the CF drive.

Now, after

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[rolf@salon ~]$ uptime
 09:09:04 up 94 days, 42 min,  4 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00

our website is drawing less than 100W 24/7/365.25

[viking60]

Good job there with a lot of interesting research.
I have never used any of it. But I have used xampp a lot. It is fine on Windows and it fits on a USB pen so you can have your server in your pocket.

[rolf]

The Puppy-Hiawatha-IGEL webserver has been plugging along, providing the simple, low-traffic Elegant Styling Salon presence that does get visitors and brings in new customers. Seems like the CF just wore out as website configuration changes were not being saved across boots and, after it was replaced, formatting it is not working right. There was another card in the drawer, bought at the time I was acquiring bootable ide-flash candidates for this server, and I transferred the website to that one, got back up and running in short order.

However, I got to thinking about more durable boot media, one of which is a smaller type of SSD, a Disk On Module that can be plugged to the 40-pin ide connector on the motherboard.

This flash module can be powered through pin 20 of the IDE connector. If the host interface does not provide power on pin 20, the included 4-pin molex pass-through power adapter may be used instead. A switch on top of the module allows configuration as Master or Slave.

I take it these are more sophisticated than the Compact Flash. This one uses single-level-cell nand flash memory and the brochure talks of built-in wear-leveling algorithms at the Transcend website.

There is an interesting feature of hiawatha (also in apache), virtual hosts. Your website can be shielded and multiple domains can be hosted on one server:

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# DEFAULT WEBSITE
# It is wise to use your IP address as the hostname of the default website
# and give it a blank webpage. By doing so, automated webscanners won't find
# your possible vulnerable website.
#
Hostname = 127.0.0.1
WebsiteRoot = /root/httpd/hiawatha
StartFile = index.php
AccessLogfile = /var/log/hiawatha/access.log
ErrorLogfile = /var/log/hiawatha/error.log
#ErrorHandler = 404:/error.cgi


# VIRTUAL HOSTS
# Use a VirtualHost section to declare the websites you want to host.
#

VirtualHost {
        Hostname = localhost
        WebsiteRoot = /root/httpd/hiawatha
        StartFile = index.php
        AccessLogfile = /var/log/hiawatha/access.log
        ErrorLogfile = /var/log/hiawatha/error.log
        UseFastCGI = PHP5
        UseXSLT = yes
}


Using one of the spare desktops, I formatted the DOM in reiserfs with a 512MB swap, just in case, as the IGEL is limited to 256MB ram. I installed Puppy, the hiawatha pet, and loaded all the files and configurations from the webserver. Then, I changed port 80 forwarding in the router to point at this machine, temporarily, to check that everything was working on the interwebs

I've rented rolfpedersen.biz and the IGEL is hosting two websites, atm, using Hiawatha in Puppy 4.31 on the new and improved, 4G Transcend SLC DOM, powered through the connector, no messy wiring needed

[viking60]

How did you point rolfpedersen.biz to your local box? (I only know LAMP)

[rolf]

First, I bought (rented) the domain from my current registrar, Namecheap.com
BTW, you might remember my complaints about domain.com and questions about a good registrar. Well, I transferred our domains to namecheap and have been pleased with their support, much happier, overall.

At my account on their website, I follow various steps, not clearly remembered, that include adding the domain to my Managed Domains, set up an A record, there and in my router Dynamic DNS, and that's about it. Since my internet account is dynamic ip, I need the dynamic dns account, also provided by namecheap.

[viking60]

Yup makes sense. I use free ones to access music servers and a lampservers (You know-Bjørk etc )
Good job there.
So where is the photo of the thin client? Have I missed it or are you using that that big lump as the thin client?

[rolf]

Look in the first post, the spoiler under eBAy. (one reason I don't like spoilers is pictures get lost) That's the IGEL motherboard with previous website on Compact Flash in 270-degree CF-IDE 40-pin adapter in the ide connector, wires attached for power. In the last photo of today's first post, the "lump" is the other side of the Transcend 4GB DOM, with the white power connector showing at upper left, not needed as power comes through pin 20 of the ide connector.
Simpler, stronger, better! ...allegedly...