Jan Stary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > last night, I installed 4.1 on the new ALIX.1C: > http://www.pcengines.ch/alix1c.htm (see dmesg at bottom). > The intended use of the box is a home router/firewall/NAT/DNS/DHCP > for my home "network" of about four computers (heterogeneous).
I recently got a Soekris net5501, which is uncannily similar (I guess they're both based on the same reference design), and moved the same kind of infrastructure functions to that box, so I had to look at similar decisions. > Firstly, swap (i don't really mind reinstalling). > > The machine has 256M of RAM, and the storage is a 2G CF card (seen as > wd0). The machine is mostly idle (basically just routes). How much swap > do you think I should set for such operation? For regular operation, > I don't think I need a swap partition at all Indeed. Just run without swap. > (how would I do that? A 'b' partition of zero size, as it has to exist?), Actually, it does not have to exist. > but to be able to save possible core dumps, I am thinking of 300M > swap and 300M /var (to hold /var/crash). Is this reasonable? Do you want to do kernel development and debugging on that box? It depends on how you view the machine. I decided to forgo the usual multiuser system approach and treat the box as an appliance. The whole point is that it will just sit there, performs its job, and I won't have to touch it. I didn't twiddle with settings unless required for functionality. No need for a pretty shell prompt. I didn't even bother to create a user account. What for? I'd have to prefix nearly all commands with sudo anyway. Partitions? There's only a single partition 'a'. > Secondly, the network interfaces. The box comes with an on-board > vr0 at pci0 dev 13 function 0 "VIA VT6105M RhineIII" rev 0x96: irq 10 > which I currently use as the external iface, and the PIC slot holds > rl0 at pci0 dev 12 function 0 "Realtek 8139" rev 0x10: irq 11 > which is used as the internal iface. I also have the following > cards in my hands, and I would like to figure out which combination > of external/internal would give me the "best" performance (if it > makes any difference at all): > > Intel PRO/100 S Desktop adapter > 3C905C-TX-M Etherlink 10/100 PCI 3 Well, near the top of /sys/dev/ic/rtl81x9.c you can find Bill Paul's famous rant on just how crappy the rl(4) hardware is. He concludes: "It's impossible given this rotten design to really achieve decent performance at 100Mbps, unless you happen to have a 400MHz PII or some equally overmuscled CPU to drive it." That was written quite a few years ago, and as wimpy as a Geode LX800 may seem today, it qualifies as an "overmuscled CPU". Any of your cards above will be fine. I doubt you're going to notice any difference. > I don't have any idea about what amount of e.g. fragment reassembly the > external/internal iface needs to do, and which card (or which card's > driver) is "best" for that. Fragment reassembly doesn't happen in the driver. > Thirdly, the CF storage. Having read > http://www.kaschwig.net/projects/openbsd/wrap/#mfs > http://blog.innerewut.de/2005/05/14/openbsd-3-7-on-wrap > http://blog.innerewut.de/2005/05/19/openbsd-3-7-on-wrap-revised > http://blog.innerewut.de/2005/06/03/small-update-on-openbsd-3-7-on-wrap > (which apply to 3.7 on WRAP, the predecesor of ALIX), I am concerned > about the CF wearing off. I'm not. > As these articles are from 2005 - do these things still apply to > newer CF cards, and should I therefore set up a mfs? I don't think these things still applied back then either. At EuroBSDCon 2005, Poul-Henning Kamp, who has a lot of experience with this, broached the topic in one of his talks and basically said that it wasn't a concern in practice and that he wanted to try out a flash drive as his laptop disk. > What else should I do to make the CF card live longer (noatime > comes to mind of course). Buy a bigger flash so wear-leveling can spread the writes around. But with CFs now starting at 1 GB, this isn't an issue either. -- Christian "naddy" Weisgerber [EMAIL PROTECTED]
