The datacenter (SS4200):
How to install/configure Intel's SS4200-EHW with flexibility and performance in mind
Part 1/2: installation
Back to the main page
Strategy - blind startup:
- Prepare a Knoppix OS (or any other one) on a USB-stick
- Boot the SS4200 with Knoppix on USB-stick
- SSH to the SS4200 and install Gentoo.
- download knoppix
- put knoppix on a USB-stick (I created a single partition and formatted it with ext3) and make it bootable (practically create a partition, put in there all you found in the image you downloaded which you probably mounted with "mount -v -o loop <what_you_downloaded.img> /mnt/<where_you_mounted_the_usbstick>" and make it bootable with grub - ATTENTION not to touch your local HDD!!).
- Boot with the USB-stick on a "normal" PC to see what happens and to check that everything is ok. Check as well the sequence of commands I mention below (if they don't work keep track of your sequence).
- On the USB-stick you just created edit "<whereever_you_mounted_it>/boot/grub.conf".
You'll find a line which will look more or less like this:kernel /boot/isolinux/linux ramdisk_size=100000 init=/etc/init lang=us keyboard=sg xkeyboard=sg apm=power-off vga=791 initrd=minirt.gz nomce quiet BOOT_IMAGE=knoppix - Add a "2" at the end to avoid loading the graphical interface (X). Then end-result should look more or less like this:
kernel /boot/isolinux/linux ramdisk_size=100000 init=/etc/init lang=us keyboard=sg xkeyboard=sg apm=power-off vga=791 initrd=minirt.gz nomce quiet BOOT_IMAGE=knoppix 2
- Again, try the USB-stick on another PC and exactly keep track of what you're doing to:
- Change to the root user (probably "sudo su -")
- Set the password of the root user (probably "passwd" followed by twice the same password)
- Start the ssh shell (probably "/etc/init.d/ssh start")
- Connect to the SS4200 the USB-stick you just created and a USB-keyboard.
- By keeping pressed the reset button at the back, keep the power button at the front pressed until it becomes orange. This should force the NAS boot from USB-stick - you might need 2-3 attempts to get the right timing - it might work when you're about to give up :)
- Once the power button is orange press from time to time the "UP"- and "DOWN"-arrows button on your keyboard as you did on your other PC (interrupts the automatic boot sequence of Knoppix.
- (After ~20 seconds that you pressed a few times the "UP-arrow" on the keyboard you are sure that the automatic boot sequence has been stopped.)
- Now press on the keyboard the following keys:
* "e": makes you go into Edit mode of the boot parameters.
* "e": makes you edit the kernel commands
* " ": (space)
* "2": this and the above key add " 2" to the kernel config, to avoid booting into graphical mode.
* [ENTER-key]: confirms
* "b": boots the system with the new kernel options.
- WAIT until you see no blinking coming from your USB-stick.
- Once you see that no blinking occurs use "nmap" on your other Linux-PC to see which IPv4-address was assigned to the network card of the SS4200 - e.g. in my case as all my PC get an IP like "10.0.0.???" I issue the command "nmap 10.0.0.*". If you don't see a new IP-address, you did something wrong (assuming that you tried this sequence of commands with another PC connected to a monitor and that there everything went fine).
- Now that you know that the network interface of your SS4200 is up and running you can set a password for the "root" user and activate "sshd":
* "su -": makes you become the "root" user. Just to be sure.
* "passwd": makes you set a password for the "root" user.
* twice <yourpassword>: set and confirm "root"'s password.
* "/etc/init.d/ssh start": starts "sshd". Make sure not to have any typo.
- By running the commands above you should see that the LED of your USB-stick blinks from time to time => that's a good sign. Now you're ready to ssh to the IP you discovered previously. Once you're in you can issue the usual "lspci" & Co. to know what kind of system your have to prepare :o)