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In linux.gentoo.user, James wrote: |
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> Gregory Shearman <zekeyg <at> gmail.com> writes: |
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> |
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> |
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>> b) The important reason I need an initramfs is that I have my root |
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>> filesystems on LVM partitions (except for my ARM servers). |
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> |
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> Hello Gregory, |
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> |
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> Please tell me, as much as you are confortable with, |
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> about your ARM servers.... |
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I'm running 2 servers at the moment. They are very low power and they |
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mainly serve my home network. One is a Marvell Sheevaplug (single core |
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1.2GHZ 512MB memory) and has been running reliably for many years. The |
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other is a Texas Instruments Pandaboard (2 core Cortex A9 Processor - |
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1Gb memory) . I've only had the Panda since October last year and it is |
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also a very reliable server (with added GUI HDMI benefits!). |
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> Running Gentoo? Running Embedded Gentoo? Which kernels? |
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> HDD ? File Systems? Configurations, Grub 2? LVM, RAID ? |
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Both servers are running Gentoo Stable... therefore current kernels (for |
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their architecture). Both have external HDD attached via USB. |
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File systems: root filesystem is on an SDHC card (2nd partition). Other |
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filesystems (except for the boot partition) are all on LVM. I have |
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/usr/src, /usr/portage, /usr/portage/distfiles is a symlink to |
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/var/www/localhost/gentoo/distfiles (another filesystem). I also have |
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/var/tmp/portage on a separate filesystem and I also run a postgresql |
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database server which also has its own partition on |
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/var/lib/postgresql/<version>. Both servers have the same setup as I'm |
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currently in the process of replacing the sheevaplug with the panda. |
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Grub? There's no such thing on ARM machines. The kernel or uImage looks |
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for the first partition on the configured root device (SDHC on my |
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systems) the first partition MUST be VFAT (unfortunately) and it |
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contains the u-boot bootloader and the kernel (uImage). Kernels are |
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built the same way as x86 kernels except you do "make uImage" instead of |
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"make bzImage". |
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LVM? All the above filesystems, except the root partition and the boot |
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partition are LVM volumes. Filesystems are mostly Ext4 (very |
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conventional). |
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RAID? Nope. |
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> Typical usage? |
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Print server, database server, backups, webserver - which includes serving gentoo |
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portage and distfiles to other machines on the network (THTTPD is a |
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great minimal web server). |
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> What install docs did you follow? |
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Sheevaplug: |
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http://dev.gentoo.org/~armin76/arm/sheevaplug/install.xml#install |
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Pandaboard: |
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http://dev.gentoo.org/~armin76/arm/pandaboard/install.xml |
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It's easy. |
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> Any suggestions on setting up ARM servers, cluster, |
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> and such are most welcome. |
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ARM servers aren't much different to other servers but you must realise |
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that these are low powered devices (the ones I run anyway) and aren't |
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really suited to large loads. They especially suit a small business or |
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home hobbyist environment. Even so, compiling Gentoo, especially on the |
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Panda is not a problem and doesn't take forever (except for gcc |
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updates 8-)). |
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I suppose you could cluster a number of these devices but I think it |
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would be more efficient to use a more powerful server running servers as |
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virtual machines. |
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-- |
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Regards, |
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Gregory. |
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