a 'new' fileserver...
Not long ago, I bought these opterons but in the end, I decided the whole setup to get these running would be way beyond my reach, budgetwise…
So… the other day I ran into a colleague at work and he was talking about some dual Opteron-board he could get his hands on, now if only he could get some Opterons cheap… He was talking to the right man, and you should’ve seen the look on his face when I told him, I got a pair on spare at home he could use…
Anyways, I gave him my Opterons and in the end, to keep things simple, he gave me his old setup, which is this Asus SK8N-board with an Opteron 146 and 512MB Reg ECC-memory… This way I wouldn’t have to spend another dime on my setup and I got a new fileserver, just like that! And he’s happy with his uberleet dual Opteron fileserver at his place…
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I’m hungry for some CPU-grunt in my fileserver, also from an experimenting point of view, to see if I can enhance my (rather famous) encrypted fileserver, which made it to slashdot the other day…
click to enlarge
Anyways, the slashdot-setup has been working like a dream… (take a quick look at that uptime, 242 days)
Some console-output before I shut it down…
markie@scramjet’s password:
Last login: Fri Jun 23 21:11:17 2006
OpenBSD 3.6 (GENERIC) #59: Fri Sep 17 12:32:57 MDT 2004
Welcome to OpenBSD: The proactively secure Unix-like operating system.
Please use the sendbug(1) utility to report bugs in the system.
Before reporting a bug, please try to reproduce it with the latest
version of the code. With bug reports, please try to ensure that
enough information to reproduce the problem is enclosed, and if a
known fix for it exists, include that as well.
-bash-3.00$ su – Password:
Terminal type? [xterm]
-bash-3.00# uname -a
OpenBSD scramjet.macstuff.local 3.6 GENERIC#59 i386
-bash-3.00# uptime
9:17PM up 242 days, 2:51, 2 users, load averages: 0.33, 0.16, 0.10
-bash-3.00# df
Filesystem 512-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/sd0a 15517420 11405220 3336332 77% /
/dev/wd0a 384551416 384551364 -19227516 105% /datacrypt/disk1
/dev/wd1a 384551416 384551364 -19227516 105% /datacrypt/disk2
/dev/svnd0c 378258672 301799752 57545988 84% /data/disk1
/dev/svnd1c 378258672 344841936 14503804 96% /data/disk2
-bash-3.00#
click to enlarge
...and now this one will work like a dream, for sure
Some console-output on the ‘new’ machine…
-bash-3.00$ su – Password:
Terminal type? [xterm]
-bash-3.00# cryptfs1
-bash-3.00# cryptfs1 -m
Encryption key:
-bash-3.00# cryptfs2 -m
Encryption key:
-bash-3.00# df
Filesystem 512-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/sd0a 15517420 11405172 3336380 77% /
/dev/wd0a 384551416 384551364 -19227516 105% /datacrypt/disk1
/dev/wd1a 384551416 384551364 -19227516 105% /datacrypt/disk2
/dev/svnd0c 378258672 301799752 57545988 84% /data/disk1
/dev/svnd1c 378258672 344841936 14503804 96% /data/disk2
-bash-3.00# dmesg
OpenBSD 3.6 (GENERIC) #59: Fri Sep 17 12:32:57 MDT 2004
deraadt@i386.openbsd.org:/usr/src/sys/arch/i386/compile/GENERIC
cpu0: AMD Opteron™ Processor 146 (“AuthenticAMD” 686-class) 2 GHz
cpu0: FPU,V86,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CFLUSH,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2
real mem = 536190976 (523624K)
Don’t you just love generic kernels… Only thing I did was tell the ‘new’ system to boot from the SCSI-controller… Mount the encrypted partitions and tada, off we go!
Only thing is, this 2GHz AMD64 beauty now is actually slower in en/decrypting than my old MP1800+ as it seems in first tests, but I’m gonna wait till I got the money for 4 SATA-disks and then I’m gonna install the whole shebang from scratch again… on OpenBSD/AMD64 instead of OpenBSD/i386. So, yes, at this moment it’s slower… I’m not sure this is the only reason, I would’ve said up front this CPU/setup would be quicker in 32-bit also, but I’m not sure if that’s the only thing going on right now (but to be honest, I don’t care that much about it at this moment either).
It works and that was the goal for now…
click to enlarge
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I am not so impressed with uptime numbers, a 3.9-stable system would impress me more :-)
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=openbsd-misc&m=114487136426247&w=2
I would like to point you here:
http://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade37.html
http://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade38.html
http://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade39.html
Your colleague is using a dual Opteron as a file-server? What’s he using as a workstation, then?
>What’s he using as a workstation, then?
Well, to be honest, I haven’t got a clue, but that will be some single CPU gamingrig for sure. To explain a little bit on how these guys decide on stuff… These are Windows/LAN-party-guys/gamers… And this fileserver of him is a windows-machine with a gazillion gigabytes with stuff on it, I believe, 14 300GB+harddrives, all put together on software RAID-arrays and such… Don’t get me wrong, this (in a long run) wouldn’t be my choice of doing things….
I believe he was looking for some more grunt for these arrays (I did suggest a hardware RAID5 SATA-card to him…). Anyways, next to that, there will be a pose-factor also, they roll out this fileserver to these parties as the main fileserver of their gamingclan and of course, a dual opteron is a nice machine. I wouldn’t be surprised though if they decide on putting some disco-lights somewhere… ;-)
(and to explain it a little further, it’s a hardware-company I work for, so from a software-point-of-view there’s all kinds of guys… euhm, let’s make that, it’s all windows-guys/gamers and such besides me…)(gamers make excellent colleagues to trade hardware with though... :-))
http://alexadex.com/ad/url/geektechnique.org
You can see where the cufflinks were posted.
Alexadex rules btw, next season kicks off on July 1st.
Hey, Mark! We want more news/posts! More regular!
Yeah, the site doesn’t get updated as much as it used to be…Come one, forget about summer and the sun shining outside…write something! Entertain us!
haha, right guys, i’ll do what i can :-)
i really appreciate to hear from you guys and things like this
Love the site, but do wish it was updated more often.
I am still waiting for some awesome project with your 3d-glasses and from your large pile of suns
Did I read that you just put the AMD64 in a machine compiled with an i386 Kernel? Cause yeah if it ran at all I would expect it to run slow as hell till you got a 64 bit kernel in there.
@Gavin (#9)
I used the old install to boot my fileserver back up again. (Also because I need it so much _) It’s scheduled for a complete new install anytime soon (I’ve got to get some new disks also)
...but still, why would a 2.0GHz AMD64 be slower on OpenBSD/i386 than a 1.5GHz MP1800+? In 32-bit, this AMD64 should be a lot quicker also…
Don’t get me wrong, I am gonna run OpenBSD/AMD64 on this machine, just like I run Gentoo/x86_64 on my workstation, but when you compare it to the windows-world, almost everybody runs 32-bit-kernels on this kind of machinery, sad but true…
Ah well, I just need to find some time :D
I followed your original tute some time ago and I’d like to mount my encrypted volume on linux. How about a howto telling us how to do that?!