UPDATE installing Debian on Cobalt Qube 2

[Markus Schröder]

Finally i convinced the qube to install lenny! Was on the last try i
gave it before removing it from my desk to free some place for my laptop
again, but first i had it to be assembled again, when i saw the
CMOS-battery...you know what's coming now, right ;) ?!?

I used a little paper strip to break the circuit between battery and
board, switched qube on and started hyperterm, entered the "netboot"
option, then choosed "NFS" to boot from and  the serial console for
installation. All worked like it should do, IP-address was assigned
correct, CoLo v1.22 loaded without probs and  there it went ...

Funniest thing is, the paper strip i used to "disconnect" the
CMOS-battery was from an asian fortune cookie i've got this weekend, it
says "You will soon have a windfall" :)

http://img3.myimg.de/DSC00693316fe.jpg

Next things to do:
- replace that f*cking CMOS-battery ASAP!!!
- install a quit fan
- maybe light the qube in a decent blue with a few LEDs if the behaviour
of the green LEDs aren't changed ;)

cu...
...Markus...


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[Glyn Astill]

--- On Tue, 22/9/09, Markus Schröder <m.schroeder@...> wrote:

> Finally i convinced the qube to
> install lenny! Was on the last try i gave it before removing
> it from my desk to free some place for my laptop again, but
> first i had it to be assembled again, when i saw the
> CMOS-battery...you know what's coming now, right ;) ?!?
>
> I used a little paper strip to break the circuit between
> battery and board, switched qube on and started hyperterm,
> entered the "netboot" option, then choosed "NFS" to boot
> from and  the serial console for installation. All
> worked like it should do, IP-address was assigned correct,
> CoLo v1.22 loaded without probs and  there it went ...
>
> Funniest thing is, the paper strip i used to "disconnect"
> the CMOS-battery was from an asian fortune cookie i've got
> this weekend, it says "You will soon have a windfall" :)
>
> http://img3.myimg.de/DSC00693316fe.jpg
>
> Next things to do:
> - replace that f*cking CMOS-battery ASAP!!!
> - install a quit fan
> - maybe light the qube in a decent blue with a few LEDs if
> the behaviour of the green LEDs aren't changed ;)
>
> cu...
> ...Markus...

Nice, let us know how it goes, if you don't have any issues then I may try again.

I was installing a chunk of packages I need in one go, so it's possible my issues were down to one of them.





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[Markus Schröder]

Glyn Astill schrieb:
> Nice, let us know how it goes, if you don't have any issues then I may try again.
>  
Installation using the serial console was as easy as installing a normal
debian on a desktop or server. After the base installation and updates
from the debian servers were done to the WD800 HD, i installed the SSH
package using "apt-get install ssh".

As i've seen no realtime-chip inside the qube, there's no correct system
time set when you start it. To solve this i installed the NTP-server so
correct time is set from a timeserver on the net everytime it is
started. Maybe i'll add a radio controlled clock to the serial port
somewhere in the future.

BE CAREFUL (!!!!!) if you remove the CMOS-battery, this little bay which
holds the battery only is connected by two soldered pads and both can't
take much force. Take a look at the picture i linked yesterday, it's the
pad named "XBT1" left from the screw. I had to solder it after i removed
battery and bay by gentle force...remove the card holding RAM and CPU
makes this much easier if this happens to you, took me about 5 or 10
minutes to fix that problem.
> I was installing a chunk of packages I need in one go, so it's possible my issues were down to one of them.
Good luck, i'm still trying around with the Qube. But i'm gonna look
forward to get a 2nd one ;)

cu...
...Markus...


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[Sameer Verma]

On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 3:44 PM, Markus Schröder
<m.schroeder@...> wrote:

> Finally i convinced the qube to install lenny! Was on the last try i gave it
> before removing it from my desk to free some place for my laptop again, but
> first i had it to be assembled again, when i saw the CMOS-battery...you know
> what's coming now, right ;) ?!?
>
> I used a little paper strip to break the circuit between battery and board,
> switched qube on and started hyperterm, entered the "netboot" option, then
> choosed "NFS" to boot from and  the serial console for installation. All
> worked like it should do, IP-address was assigned correct, CoLo v1.22 loaded
> without probs and  there it went ...
>
> Funniest thing is, the paper strip i used to "disconnect" the CMOS-battery
> was from an asian fortune cookie i've got this weekend, it says "You will
> soon have a windfall" :)
>
> http://img3.myimg.de/DSC00693316fe.jpg
>
> Next things to do:
> - replace that f*cking CMOS-battery ASAP!!!
> - install a quit fan
> - maybe light the qube in a decent blue with a few LEDs if the behaviour of
> the green LEDs aren't changed ;)
>

Can you post any info you find on LED control?

Sameer


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[Markus Schröder]

After i finally succeeded installing lenny on the qube, i installed SSH,
NTP and the apache2.

But then i noticed that lenny seems to die slowly. In the beginning the
clock will die after 10 or 15 minutes, i noticed that when the
LCD-display on the back stopped. So i logged on over SSH and tried
"date" on the command line to see if its a problem with the LCD or the
system clock, but the system time was all the same the 5 or 6 times i
tried this. Then i opened a 2nd SSH session to see what processes are
running, worked without problems. When i switched back a few minutes
later to the 1st opened SSH session, it won't accept any input, and
"top" on the 2nd session died not much later, too.

In the end, i installed etch and it seems to run stable for the whole
sunday at all. But there are some changes to be done like installing the
NTP-server, apache2 and so on. I hope it will run stable after this,
too. Other thing is, the green bar in front of the qube doesn't flicker
anymore when there is activity on the HD using etch.

If i got some spare time within the next days i'll plug an old HD to the
qube and install lenny again to see what happens.


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[Glyn Astill]

--- On Mon, 28/9/09, Markus Schröder <m.schroeder@...> wrote:

>
> But then i noticed that lenny seems to die slowly. In the
> beginning the clock will die after 10 or 15 minutes, i
> noticed that when the LCD-display on the back stopped. So i
> logged on over SSH and tried "date" on the command line to
> see if its a problem with the LCD or the system clock, but
> the system time was all the same the 5 or 6 times i tried
> this. Then i opened a 2nd SSH session to see what processes
> are running, worked without problems. When i switched back a
> few minutes later to the 1st opened SSH session, it won't
> accept any input, and "top" on the 2nd session died not much
> later, too.
>

That's exactly what I saw here, although I'd rather lenny work it is nice to hear someone else saw the same behaviour - I was beginning to think I was loosing it. My observations are here if you're interested:

http://www.mail-archive.com/debian-mips@.../msg07679.html

> In the end, i installed etch and it seems to run stable for
> the whole sunday at all. But there are some changes to be
> done like installing the NTP-server, apache2 and so on. I
> hope it will run stable after this, too. Other thing is, the
> green bar in front of the qube doesn't flicker anymore when
> there is activity on the HD using etch.
>

Yeah the flashy green bar appeared in lenny.

Personally I couldn't even get on with etch, everything setup like a dream as you'd expect from debian, however whenever I tried to compile anything substantial (postgres sources) it'd almost always die half way through.

> If i got some spare time within the next days i'll plug an
> old HD to the qube and install lenny again to see what
> happens.
>

Perhaps the debian-mips people need a qube2 for testing...





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[Peter-412]

Just to let you know that Etch is running strong on my Qube 2:
Linux qube 2.6.18-6-r5k-cobalt #1 Sat May 24 15:22:39 UTC 2008 mips
pvz@qube:~$ uptime 01:57:40 up 481 days.

I haven't tried Lenny, my box just streams my music from a 300gb disk
over nfs and does so well. Uptime could have been more if it weren't for
power outages.

Glyn Astill wrote:

> --- On Mon, 28/9/09, Markus Schröder <m.schroeder@...> wrote:
>> But then i noticed that lenny seems to die slowly. In the
>> beginning the clock will die after 10 or 15 minutes, i
>> noticed that when the LCD-display on the back stopped. So i
>> logged on over SSH and tried "date" on the command line to
>> see if its a problem with the LCD or the system clock, but
>> the system time was all the same the 5 or 6 times i tried
>> this. Then i opened a 2nd SSH session to see what processes
>> are running, worked without problems. When i switched back a
>> few minutes later to the 1st opened SSH session, it won't
>> accept any input, and "top" on the 2nd session died not much
>> later, too.
>>
>
> That's exactly what I saw here, although I'd rather lenny work it is nice to hear someone else saw the same behaviour - I was beginning to think I was loosing it. My observations are here if you're interested:
>
> http://www.mail-archive.com/debian-mips@.../msg07679.html
>
>> In the end, i installed etch and it seems to run stable for
>> the whole sunday at all. But there are some changes to be
>> done like installing the NTP-server, apache2 and so on. I
>> hope it will run stable after this, too. Other thing is, the
>> green bar in front of the qube doesn't flicker anymore when
>> there is activity on the HD using etch.
>>
>
> Yeah the flashy green bar appeared in lenny.
>
> Personally I couldn't even get on with etch, everything setup like a dream as you'd expect from debian, however whenever I tried to compile anything substantial (postgres sources) it'd almost always die half way through.
>
>> If i got some spare time within the next days i'll plug an
>> old HD to the qube and install lenny again to see what
>> happens.
>>
>
> Perhaps the debian-mips people need a qube2 for testing...
>
>
>      
>
>

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