[frgeek-michiana] Lab Notes 5/22/03
- From: Tom Brown <tbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: FreeGeek Michiana <frgeek-michiana@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 11:38:08 -0500
Lab Notes 5/22/03
Present: Mike Cook, Tom Brown; 6:00 pm - 9:30 pm
:: iOpener
Mike didn't bring the iOpener to the lab. He has made progress and believes
he will have it booting off a hard drive this week. This iOpener is a late
model and has anti-hacking measures applied by the manufacturer. Plus the
previous owner hacked it or tried to hack it. The iOpener has a SanDisk.
The trick is to transfer a small kernel with usb nic support to the SanDisk.
A community of iOpener hackers exists. Mike has found considerable after
market parts and hacking support on several web sites.
:: IBM NetVista N2800
Mike and I spent the entire lab working on the NetVista 2800 thin client.
We gained ground but aren't close to booting Linux on one yet.
. Bios Password
Mike and I solved the problem of unlocking the N2800 password protected
bios. After searching the IBM support site for quite a while we got ideas.
IBM's instructions are cryptic and include empty documents and missing
diagrams. But it was enough to formulate some theories. The first few
didn't work. Then Mike fell upon the right combination of jumper settings
to unlock the bios.
. Hard Drive
We discovered the bios supports hard drives. Mike figures that an odd
square plug mounted on the mobo is the power connector for a hard drive or
cdrom drive. But will the N2800 boot from a local hard drive? Neither of us
has a power cord with the oddball connector. We couldn't find a reference
to the connector, the part or a hard drive at IBM.
. Token Ring Obstruction
Mike and I adjusted the bios to use dhcp. I installed an ethernet nic with
a bootrom. The N2800 recognized it and the nic tried to communicate with
the network. However the ethernet nic couldn't establish a conversation
with Boris the boot server. Boris' system logs don't even reflect an
attempt at dhcp from the N2800, so foreign was the protocol the N2800
spoke. Unless we can find a way to turn off token ring, we can't boot a
N2800-TUS from an ethernet card.
. Flash
The N2800 has a flash chip. We suppose the bios is on the flash chip and
can be rewritten. If we try and fail, hello N2800 doorstop.
. CompactFlash
The most likely method to boot Linux on the N2800 is the CompactFlash (CF).
Mike found prices for various sizes of CF. The least expensive are under
$10.00. If we can put a Linux kernel with ethernet support on a CF, we may
be able to netboot from an LTSP server. When I got home from the lab, I
discovered Jay done the same research and sent a list of CF sizes and prices.
. IBM Hacks the N2800
Mike and I ran a searches on Google and came up with one thread advising
folks that N2800's won't work with LTSP. However the writer mentioned a
method of net booting Linux that IBM devised. With better search terms I
found a reference to a Linux boot kit for the N2800 on IBM's site. IBM
warns that it is designed folks who want to "build-your-own" thin client
solution. Turns out that Jay had found the same page independently and
mailed the same page url to the list.
The kit includes all the files necessary to boot a N2800 or N2200 from
TurboLinux 6.0 or RedHat 7.1 server. The method is not the same as LTSP.
IBM proprietary software is involved. So the N2800 thin client network will
require its own server. And the hack probably won't get us around the token
ring problem. The tar.gz file from IBM is 36 mb and the total install is
1.6 gb including RH rpms.
Tom
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