[FADCA] FPAC Linux test switch working.

Mon, 8 Mar 2004 00:01:16 -0500

Bill Sinbine wrote:
> At 09:15 PM 3/7/2004 -0500, you wrote:
> 
> What I was getting at Chuck was while you were looking around see what
> would have to be changed to have the floppy expand onto the small hard
> drive instead of loading into memory and writing data to the floppy. I
> assume this could be done by changing the install or unzip paths. It
> would still be the floppy install, just on the hard drive..  I belive
> this is what you were getting at in one of your messages.
> The nice thing about the floppy as it is made now is that we can give
> it a try and see how it goes and then just remove it and reboot and
> the dos version would load back up and run.

I have already spent the better part of last week poking around
trying to do exactly that. I think I have a idea of how to do it,
but I have not had the time to set up a machine to do so. You need
basicly a machine that has two HD's though I may be able to pull
it off with a HD and a CD with one of the bootable systems that
will allow me to build the HD from the CD.

I will have to go in and modify a lot of paths which presently
point to /dev/fd0... But that is probably a nice evening.

Indeed that is what I am trying to get to is a floppy that has
enough ports to make most people happy, and all they will have
to do is go in and change the things that are locally different.
I.e. addresses, callsigns, routing.
By way this version of FPAC allows you to have a address on each
port, so you could have a address for say a 2m port and a 70cm
port. Still has the coverage as in the old fpac and rose.

> 
> This is what I was talking about above. Running the demon version of
> a bbs. I think that the fpac floppy MIGHT have all the files needed
> on it other than needing a script to make the dirs etc that the bbs
> would need set up on the HD..

There may be space, but I am not sure, the bad part is if the power
goes down all your BBS msg and other data files are lost, the system
puts all of that into ramdisk, we would have to figure out how to
stuff it back on the floppy as a backup. I think again that space
is a premium here. HD is a better solution for this I think

> 

> I agree!

We need to get them helping...

> There would be much to much stuff installed if we just installed the
> full version of linux. It would need to be stripped down to only have
> what would be needed to run fpac and a bbs program on the same box.
> This way we might be able to get away with the small 100-400 meg
> drives that we are using now. 

LINUX allows you to go in and select only that you need when you
do the install if you select "custom" I also have one that gives you
a "small install selection for firewalls and routers" I think that
was on the RH CD or the Knoppix CD.

What we usually do is set back and let it do a desktop, laptop or
server install and those are big, but if you take the time to tell
it WHAT you want then you will get it down to a minimal install, in
fact now that I remember, one of the CD's used that very term
"minimal install"

> It would be handy to have a co located bbs in the same site for the
> areas that we have switches but no local bbs's on the LAN. I belive
> that with linux we wouldn't have the problems with it running remote.

With a hd I know that we can do this one, should not be that big of
a deal. I guess I should remember that the last few years I ran a BBs
here it ran with almost no attention (TNOS box that ran the 411 and
511 servers amoung other things) in fact that thing ran for over a
year over in a corner without me looking at it, so it can be done,
and indeed it was a LINUX box, it ran for 1 year and 3 months without
me even going in and cleaning up anything. I pulled it down to change
some stuff on it so that stopped the nice up time clock run!!

The more I think about this whole thing the more the idea of a laptop
with USB serial ports becomes more and more attractive. You can get
older laptops now that have USB, you put LINUX on it with the USB
drivers, add the USB serial ports to it you need and you have a small
multi-port switch. If you use say a Toshiba portable you can run the
thing off of a 13.8v system. It takes up little rack space and uses
little power.

I am going to try that one once I get to where I can get a system
on HD.

Chuck Hast
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
To paraphrase my flight instructor;
"the only dumb question is the one you DID NOT ask resulting in my going
out and having to identify your bits and pieces in the midst of torn
and twisted metal."

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