From Alastair.Bland@cern.ch Wed Aug 25 09:22:07 2004 Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 16:46:37 +0200 From: Alastair Bland To: Stephen Jackson Cc: Bernd DEHNING , Jean-Jacques Gras , pierre.charrue@cern.ch Subject: Re: LYNXOS abroad? Hello Stephen, Bernd and Jean-Jacques (+ Pierre), There are two precedents for our LynxOS systems running outside CERN. One is in TRIUMF (Canada) and the other at the EFACEC Electrical company in Portugal. In both cases we sent a Linux machine with the PowerPC. I would prefer for DESY to use one of their Linux machines, with ssh access for me from CERN, preferably to be root on the machine. I can hop by an intermediate machine if there are security worries. The LynxOS machine should not be made accessible directly from the internet. I need DHCP, TFTP and NFS servers on the Linux machine. I need an NTP time server somewhere on the DESY site. I need about 700 MBytes of disk for the LynxOS 4.0 PowerPC distribution + the space for the AB/BDI programs and data. I can set all this up but I will not back it up! I would like to have a serial line between the Linux machine (or a terminal server) and the console port of the PowerPC. This is to debug network problems, upgrade the PowerPC firmware etc. Remote reboot would be nice but is not essential. Please think about your timing requirements. For TRIUMF we sent a PTS Timing simulator (see slnfs1:/user/abl/triumf/README). However these cards are very rare. After the experience with Rhodri's VxWorks system from the USA this summer I recommend sending a complete working VME crate plus all the cards needed already installed, rather than asking to make a mixture of DESY and CERN equipment. [ A VPN expert could maybe make a connection through the CERN and DESY firewalls without having a DESY Linux machine, even for the BOOTP/DHCP. However it is a security hole so I do not recommend it.] [ Another solution is to put all needed software in one big boot image (including the AB/BDI software), GNU zip it and then put this file in the PowerPC flash - 7 MBytes is always available on the modern PowerPCs which means to me about 21 MBytes of software uncompressed. A bit of work is required for this to remove the BOOTP/DHCP from the PowerPC boot phase. This solution does not easily permit compilation at DESY of new software. I would still need the serial link to the PowerPC accessible from CERN. ] Bye, Alastair. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Stephen Jackson" To: "A. Bland" Cc: "Bernd DEHNING" ; "Jean-Jacques Gras" Sent: Wednesday, August 11, 2004 12:09 PM Subject: LYNXOS abroad? > Hi Alastair, > > I've had a request from Bernd Dehning, to look into the possibility of running one of our existing front-ends in DESY. I understand > that the current BLM proto running in the SPS will be moved to DESY along with the prototype hardware. Ideally, we'd like to keep > the crate configured as in CERN. Unfortunately, I think that they use VxWorks there (I might wrong). > > So my question is, what would we need to get our LYNXOS crate up and running? > > I guess a server with a boot image (tftp?) and /user/pca stuff for transfer.ref... > > I'm guessing that there's no way to get this info externally from within CERN (because of firewalls etc) - or is there? AFS? > > What are your feelings on this - is it feasible? > > Cheers, > > Stephen > > PS. After we get the crate running in DESY, we then have to figure how we read the data in our applications in CERN! > >