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[apemberton]

I finally got all three of my GP+'s booting from eSata and also have silenced them with Confusticated's external fan mod. They now seem to be running much cooler which can't be bad.

I had to compile my own u-boot to give me ide and ext2 support. (existing ones do not have details of what h/w is supported.) I compiled a 2.6.38.2 kernel with Sata support as builtin rather than as a module. Had a fight with the libertas drivers as I do not want bluetooth or wlan (they are there in the kernel if I need them). All was not helped by a faulty eSata drive case (the disk inside was fine but the case electronics were intermittent which confused me no end). But eSata is Sooooo much quicker than microSD or USB.

So hopefully there should be an improvement in reliability of my GP+'s as my core network routers, DHCP and DNS servers.

Thanks to all those contributers who (through this and other forums) have silently assisted me with the many quirks I have had to battle with.

[Confusticated]

Hi Tony,
Nice to hear a success story
I am curious as to which distribution you are using (presumably your GuruServers are business related) ?

[apemberton]

I am using Debian Sid/Squeeze though I am not attempting to use Wheezy - yet.

Code: [Select]

login as: blah
         _sudZUZ#Z#XZo=_         DDDD   EEEEEE BBBB   IIIIII  AAAA   NN   NN
      _jmZZ2!!~---~!!X##wa       DD DD  EE     BB BB    II   AA  AA  NNN  NN
   .<wdP~~            -!YZL,     DD  DD EEEEE  BBBBB    II   AAAAAA  NNNN NN
  .mX2'       _%aaa__     XZ[.   DD  DD EE     BB  BB   II   AA  AA  NN NNNN
  oZ[      _jdXY!~?S#wa   ]Xb;   DDDD   EEEEEE BBBBB  IIIIII AA  AA  NN   NN
 _#e'     .]X2(     ~Xw|  )XXc
..2Z`      ]X[.       xY|  ]oZ(
..2#;      )3k;     _s!~   jXf`   Linux Version 2.6.38.2
 1Z>      -]Xb/    ~    __#2(    Compiled #1 PREEMPT Wed Apr 13 12:50:36 UTC 2011
 -Zo;       +!4ZwaaaauZZXY'      One ARM Feroceon Processor, 512M RAM
  *#[,        ~-?!!!!!!-~        1192.75 Bogomips Total
   XUb;.                         PEMBERTON-NS2
    )YXL,,
      +3#bc,
        -)SSL,,
           ~~~~~


Debian GNU/Linux wheezy/sid \n \l

[email protected]'s password:
Linux PEMBERTON-NS2 2.6.38.2 #1 PREEMPT Wed Apr 13 12:50:36 UTC 2011 armv5tel

The programs included with the Debian GNU/Linux system are free software;
the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the
individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright.

Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent
permitted by applicable law.
Last login: Mon May  9 10:40:35 2011 from 192.168.2.36
[email protected]:~#

I am not using my Sheeva/GP+'s for professional purposes but I'm afraid I'm a network geek. Various servers unecessarily handle internal VoIP (phone in every room), IP CCTV Security storage, Media (photos, my videos, music), Network Management (to be enhanced from MRTG to a graphic manager when i get round to it. Servers are in place to do email and home automation. I run three subnets, one for general purpose, one DMZ, one to be used for home automation. I have become somewhat reliant on my Globalscale products and thus have arranged my three GP+'s as a triangle of routers so that if one GP+ fails, I will always have a path to the internet or the other segment of my networks.

In view of the (less than perfect) reliability of Globalscale's products (I really think they need a lesson in designing for reliability/quality control), I would not consider them for a professional role. However, they are cheap and technically competent.

Plus all the techie stuff keeps this old git (64) off street corners (well keep dementia at bay) with the next challenge that I unecessarily set myself!

Have fun

[Confusticated]

have arranged my three GP+'s as a triangle

Sounds an interesting setup, and not easy to achieve avoiding closed loop routing issues. DHCP squabbles can also have strange side effects....
If you find yourself really stuck for something to pass the time doing...I would be interested in browsing through your configurations...

I know of a commercial aeroplane that they installed five computers in instead of the standard three to make it 'safer'.
The end result was it was five times more likely to have a catastrophic failure, as they divided the critical systems across the five computers
any computer failure resulted in loosing something vital, hope you haven't done the same

[apemberton]

I use DHCP for each segment on both serving routers. I don't have a problem with this as I use failover between all three GP+ routers. There are refusals of DHCP requests if an address has been allocated on the other DHCP server, but it does work and there isn't an excessive traffic volume. All three DHCP servers keep track of each other through failover. Although not strictly resilient, all DHCP servers transfer IP address allocations to a single master DNS server for internal name allocation which in turn transfers to the two slaves. If the master GP+ should fail, it is quite simple to use the slaves for name resolution until either I fix the failed GP+ or convert one of the slaves to a master. Most devices use fixed IP addresses allocated by the DHCP servers, the exceptions are the various PC's I have scattered around my rooms. This means that generally devices do not get their names dynamically from the DNS servers, their (multiple) internal names have been hand written into the DNS zone files. I have experimented with dynamic multiple name allocation through DHCP/DNS but at present I can only allocate a single internal name for each device. I have the feeling that this is still a problem with isc-dhcp-server/bind9 - there isn't clear instruction in books/manuals/google on the issue. External name resolution is performed by the DNS servers, reducing my ADSL line usage (I am limited to 1MB/Sec at present). I use quagga software and RIPv2 for routing and I havn't yet had issues with odd traffic routes. If I do, I guess I can manipulate the metrics to bias traffic. Ideally, I would like to use OSPF but that is not well supported by SoHo devices. Looking to the future, I am wondering what sort of investment in IPv6 will be necessary - I already have some default IPv6 traffic floating around internally. Externally my gateway router is 6 months old but has no upgrade path for IPv6 at present and I think my current ISP is particularly laggard in this respect. Time will tell.

I know about the reliability issue in airplanes - many moons ago, some complementary systems were designed with different hardware (MC6800/i8080) to perform the same function so that software bugs would not down the kit. I think the software was CORAL66. Having two systems is worse than having one as who knows which system is faulty. Three or more can vote.

I don't have any diagrams (or documentation!) of my network, I carry that in my head. I really ought to do that. But then, I am almost the sole user so I have to support everything anyway. I ought to get a life! 

[Confusticated]

Hi Tony,

dynamic multiple name allocation

Can you elaborate a little please (with an example ?), I don't quite follow what you mean.
Unless it is some 'other' host with a single IP being known by different names depending on which network the identity requestee is on ?

[apemberton]

Hi Tony,

dynamic multiple name allocation

Can you elaborate a little please (with an example ?), I don't quite follow what you mean.
Unless it is some 'other' host being known by different names depending on which network the identity requestee is on ?

Imagine, if you will, that you have a server which is named 'serverblah1' and you are running domain names 'blah-blah.com', 'blah-blah.eu' and 'blah-blah.tv'. The domain names are not to be restricted to specific segments of my network. You want users to be able to access 'serverblah1.blah-blah.com', 'serverblah1.blah-blah.eu' and 'serverblah1.blah-blah.tv'. I assume that these domains are registered on the 'net. If the serverblah1 is using DHCP, providing its dhclient.conf sends its name as an option in the DHCP IP allocation process it should pass up the device name to BIND zone files through the DDNS mechanism. I use DHCP for all my fixed servers and clients apart from the core routers so if I want to change my IP numbering plan, I do not have to amand every device on my net. It works just fine for a single zone and that is well documented. However transferring the client name ('serverblah1') to all three zone files, and thus domains, does not work for me as yet. I have been trying DHCP option 119 followed by the list of domains as suggested somewhere but as yet, I havn't had success. Since I use fixed, DHCP allocated IP addresses (derived from the MAC of each device), it isn't mission critical. I would like it to work though, since it allows full control of DHCP/DNS clients and therefore giving me the flexibility I desire. I will also need to set up a VPN in the future so there will need to be more work on that too.

BTW, this message is reaching you via one or more of my GP+'s! I tried to insert an MRTG graphic but gave up! 

[Confusticated]

Thanks for that, I follow now. I have never been in that situation, as for resilience I have always used a fixed IP for (mission critical) servers, with the services running on the server matched to 'alias' IPs. That gave me a very easy way to 'migrate' a service from one piece of hardware to another (eg, DNS was always 192.0.2.1 regardless of which host was running it). It also meant I never had to go near the firewall once it was configured or leave holes in it.

Without thinking about it, would CNAME'ing work ?
hostname is set to privatename1.hiddendomain.....

bind...
serverblah1.blah-blah.com CNAME privatename1.hiddendomain.....
serverblah1.blah-blah.eu CNAME privatename1.hiddendomain.....
serverblah1.blah-blah.tv CNAME privatename1.hiddendomain.....

Ill go and ponder this for a bit, and come back and edit it if I think of anything...

[apemberton]

I did not want to go for static IP allocation in /etc/network/interfaces on each of the servers, there is no need to do so since allocating a 'host' IP on the network core keeps control centrally and allows simple IP number changes if I decide to change my IP numbering plan.

I do use CNAME's but only within the same zone file. I think using a different domain name within the same zone file might violate BIND's rules.

I'm sure that dynamically updating bind zones is do-able, it is just that it is a fairly uncommon scenario and thus not a lot of comment in manuals/literaure/google. I will try a few more things from time to time but for the moment, I shall back off for the time being as there are more important things to do! Like doing the overgrown garden!

[Confusticated]

Well I just set it up and it works for me.
dhcp performs the DDNS adding the entry for privatename1.hiddendomain....
and the CNAME which I had manually entered before chains to it as it should.
I was expecting to see a warning when I started bind with a CNAME with no matching A record, but it doesn't seem to care.

[apemberton]

I have been thinking about this!

Firstly, I am intrigued by the use of 'out-of-zone' domain names within a zone using CNAME. Shows bind is quite bendy! Thanks anyway. I wonder what nslookup/dig display?

Secondly, ideally I don't want to define clients/sever hostnames in a zone file, leaving that to the DHCP client to supply its name at DHCP discover etc. phase. As I mentioned previously, I have them setting up a single domain for both host and pool defined in the dhcpd.conf file. The transfer of a pool or host device name passes up to bind complete with a text record to a single zone fine. I will do some more experiments soon.

As I said, it isn't a major issue. Gotta get mailservers and zoneminder working properly.

[Confusticated]

bind is quite bendy

Once upon a time (before I had the authority to change things) I had the unfortunate task of looking after M$ DNS where multiple networks had been configured as a flat domain as opposed to hierarchical.
Believe me when I say Bind is what I would call a 'clean' implementation in comparison to that disgusting mess, M$ DNS didn't restrict (much) and the people who managed the domain zone didn't have a clue.

don't want to define clients/sever hostnames

I fully appreciate that you don't want 'hardware' hard-mapped, the issue is having the same 'host' in three different domains. There is no way I am aware of to make dhcp to update the two zones to which the host does not belong, something has gotta give. You will either have to alias the IP addresses on the physical hosts, or alias the names in Bind (effectively my approach above).
If the hostname is not fixed in relation to a service (say HTTP) then how do you know the hostname to resolve to get that service (if its not always going to be 'www.company.com' how does the user determine) ?

Gotta get mailservers

Good luck  , thats another one of those jobs that will never ever be completed, something will always need a tweak.

and zoneminder

Plenty of help for that on the net, Google is your Big Brother friend.

it isn't a major issue

Until somebody who is paying me asks me to do it . Thrashing these things through not only stops the brain from atrophying.....it also keeps the pockets full.

[PacoLM]

Gotta get mailservers and zoneminder working properly.

http://plugcomputer.org/plugwiki/index.php/ZoneMinder

Hope it helps,

PacoLM

[apemberton]

Thanks Paco. I was aware of that thread. I have got Zoneminder running but I am having trouble configuring the cameras I'm using. I have googled for the appropriate cams but it seems that there is little info available. I'm sure it will be fine in due course, its just getting familiar with the config detail. I am using 4 different IP cameras including a Y-Cam, Edimax, a cheapo iCAMview copmatible and an old wvc54gc. Different software provided for each. But all that is running on a eSata Sheevaplug so shouldn't strictly be in the GP threads. I will get round to it soon!

 

[PacoLM]

I finally got all three of my GP+'s booting from eSata and also have silenced them with Confusticated's external fan mod. They now seem to be running much cooler which can't be bad.

I had to compile my own u-boot to give me ide and ext2 support. (existing ones do not have details of what h/w is supported.) I compiled a 2.6.38.2 kernel with Sata support as builtin rather than as a module. Had a fight with the libertas drivers as I do not want bluetooth or wlan (they are there in the kernel if I need them). All was not helped by a faulty eSata drive case (the disk inside was fine but the case electronics were intermittent which confused me no end). But eSata is Sooooo much quicker than microSD or USB.

So hopefully there should be an improvement in reliability of my GP+'s as my core network routers, DHCP and DNS servers.

Thanks to all those contributers who (through this and other forums) have silently assisted me with the many quirks I have had to battle with.

Hi there,

 I'm interested in booting one of my guruplug+ from esata too. I have been reading and searching in all my known sources, but I had no success. Could you please share the uBoot and the procedure to get the guruplug booting from the esata drive?.
 My gp+ has actually the uboot version:

Code: [Select]

U-Boot 2011.03 (Apr 26 2011 - 21:35:00)
Marvell-GuruPlug
gcc (Debian 4.5.2-8) 4.5.2
GNU ld (GNU Binutils for Debian) 2.21.0.20110327

And the kernel 3.0.1 posted by cbxbiker61.

Thanks in advance (I hope!)

PacoLM