[luau] NEWS: Sherwin-Williams to use Linux Cash Registers

[MonMotha]

I looked through the description of your project, and I have a few 
questions, then I can get started building a floppy for you:

1) Do you want X11 or just a text console?  If X11, what video hardware 
will be on these (both monitor and video card)?

2) What kernel do you prefer?  2.0, 2.2, or 2.4.  Older kernels tend to 
be smaller, newer kernels support more nifty features.  I'm opposed to 
2.0 kernels, but will do either 2.2 or 2.4, whichever you prefer.

3) What kind of basic utils will you want?  I use busybox, so you can 
check out their site as to what is available, but I can also compile 
some stuff on my own (though space is limited of course) provided the 
app can be compiled against uClibc fairly easily.

4) I know you will be needing SSH, and I assume OpenSSH most recent 
unless you want otherwise.  The SSH needs to compile against uClibc.

5) How will these systems be networked (need to know the exact network 
cards, or I can modularize it and write up a script to let you customize 
the disk)?  Will they be static IP, or dynamic?  via DHCP, BOOTP, RARP?

A normal compressed ramdisk is 4MB once decompressed off the floppy into 
ram, but obviously how much stuff can actually be fit onto it varies 
depending on the compression level achieved.  See my floppies I've 
already made for some hints as to how much space the bare minimum takes 
up at <http://videl.ics.hawaii.edu/~monmotha/hddlesslinux>.  Obviously 
using a ramdisk uses up valuable system ram to hold the filesystem.

Another option is to skip the ramdisk completely and go with an NFS 
mounted root filesystem.  This has the advantages that you obviously 
have a lot more space as you don't have to cram everything onto the 
floppy and also allows the filesystem to be changed centrally without 
having to even reboot the machines, let alone update every single 
floppy.  However, it also requires a lot more network bandwidth as 
everything that touches the filesystem has to go over the network.  You 
also need to run NFS, which has been noted to have some security flaws 
(good ol' SUNRPC) in the past.

Yet another option is a hybrid; this is where initrd really shines.  I 
can have a tiny root filesystem load up off the floppy into an initrd, 
then load a root filesystem image into a larger ramdisk (size limited 
only by the amount of RAM in the machine really) by downloading it from 
the central server by, say, tftp before handing control off to this 
newly downloaded "real" root filesystem.  This method is really cool 
because it allows things like 20MB root filesystems (which you'd have 
trouble fitting on a floppy, even gzip compressed) without any of the 
overhead from running live via NFS.  The downsides are that is uses a 
lot of RAM (32MB MINIMUM for this) and that if you update the image on 
the server, the clients will need to be rebooted for the changes to take 
effect.

For an example of how initrd can be used, RedHat uses one to load up a 
minimum system to load kernel modules for bare minimum system hardware 
before actually booting the rest of the system.  This allows them to 
keep their kernels small and generic by modularizing almost everything 
and keeping the modules your system needs in an initrd image.

Depending on how much I need to do (X will take a while and I'll have 
major trouble fitting it on a floppy!), I might be able to get a basic 
working disk done in a day or so for you to start playing with.

--MonMotha

R. Scott Belford wrote:
> 
> On Thursday, May 23, 2002, at 08:27 PM, MonMotha wrote:
> 
>> I actually have some of this hardware that I can use to test things on 
>> (a pole display on serial and a keyboard/barcode scanner wedge). 
>> However, I'm not really a UI programmer, but I can get the basic OS 
>> base down for you fairly quickly should you want me to.
>>
>> --MonMotha
> 
> 
> Many thanks for your offer.  My planned starting point is with your 
> floppy.  For all I know at this point it will work fine.  When it 
> doesn't, I'll start breaking down where I am and figuring it out.  It'll 
> be fun.
> 
> 
> scott
> 
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