I-downloaded/installed-e-Smith-and-now-I-have-a-question thread

[Tanner]

I was browsing Hotdealios and stumbled upon e-Smith posted by CigarSmokedByClinton in this thread by DontAsk

After reading through the thread I've noticed that the following ppl are downloading it and going to install it and use it.
TechDreamer
ScAndal
Sinner
DerProfi

and barebottoms recommended ClarkConnect

anyhow...I'm going to stick this little thread in the 3com hotDeal thread so that we can stick together as we setup this proggie! I can't WAIT! (have to be outta town tonight and tomorrow. Have to watch SpiderMan 2morrow night but soon after I'll be all over this little distro!!!)

if U R usin' it, feel free to give us some tips to get us past any pitfalls.

TIA and God Bless

Tanner

 

[barebottoms]

Well since I like working with embedded appliances, lets get the ball rolling

ClarkConnect is working on their "Black Box API"

Coyote Linux is another good Distro for building an Internet Gateway.

Linux Devices .com has a good Hardware guide for small pc's for doing such a project.

http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT2016997232.html


And to tie back into the hot deals threads, Allwell, was the people that made that Web Surfer Pro Box that was going around for $50 a few year back. A good platform for a gateway
http://www.allwell.tv/

You can still find them pretty cheap onf fleabay now and then.

 

[barebottoms]

Here is a tip for crappy DSL connections:

I cron this script, to reboot the DSL modem when it notices the line going down. You know how you get into those states when your connection dies and the only way to reconnect is the modem reboot.

Well I bought a X10 Firecracker kit (another $5 hotdeal item), and came up with a use for it.

Download and compile BottleRocket.

http://mlug.missouri.edu/~tymm/#downloading

cron this script and set up you X10 module and firecracker module on your gateway.

The IP address I use is a IP for the DSLAM. I just did a traceroute from my network at home to some internect address and took the second hop.

Now I'm never down for more than 5 minutes due to a flakey connection

---------- Script -------------

#!/bin/bash
STATUS=`ping -c 2 -q X.X.X.X >/dev/null`
CODE=$?
NOW=`date`
if [ $CODE -gt 0 ]; then
echo $NOW DOWN >> /root/modem-reboot/down-status
/root/modem-reboot/br A1 off
sleep 8
/root/modem-reboot/br A1 on
echo Reboot > mail -s "Modem Rebooted" me
else
echo $NOW UP >> /root/modem-reboot/up-status
fi

 

[barebottoms]

I really don't want to work today.

My setup:

Old P200 mobo with 64 Megs of RAM.
Clark Connect ISO
2 Belkin F5FD5000 PCI NICs from ChumpUSA sale last week for $5 (uses the RealTek Drivers)
Old 1 gig drive

PacHELL DSL Dynamic Address
DNS hosted via DDEClient Script on Gateway to dyndns.org and the built in Clark Connect account.

Base CC install, worked great, but I wanted NetMeeting support, so grabbed the bleeding Edge Kernel 2.4.19-pre7 and latest IPTABLES, just patched and rebuilt the kernel. Been up for 2 weeks without a hitch.

Nice thing about it is that to change rules, it doesn't have to reboot like the stupid Linksys and SMC routers.

 

[Tanner]

I use Freesco for my Gateway/router/firewall and a small hub. Its running on

P120
floppy drive
32mb RAM

U can console into the router through one of the PCs on your own network through IE! IT ROXorZ! I'm lookin' forward to gettin' my smith distro up and running tomorrow night...I burnt it and It's ready to roll

 

[Scyber]

I am gonna play with e-smith over the next week or so. It seems like a more attractive option for me because it is not just a gateway, but it can also be a standalone file/web server (which is what I am more interested in right now).

-Scyber

 

[barebottoms]

CC is web/fileserver too Even has WEB folders for external access if you want via MS web folders.

 

[Tanner]

<< CC is web/fileserver too Even has WEB folders for external access if you want via MS web folders. >>



wow! very nice!

 

[Tanner]

have any of you guys got this up and running yet?

I'm imaging one of my W2K installs now...and reformatting

LMK

 

[Tanner]

it's running now

I haven't configured much on it yet. gonna do that when I get hometonight. It seems to be stable so far, as it's doing absolutely NOTHING! heheheheh anyway, my Freesco floppy router continually needs rebooting, so I'm hoping that E-Smith will fix that problem.

Anyone else got one up and running yet? or know of any other forums wherein ppl do have them runnin?

 

[CigarSmokedByClinton]

You can go to the e-smith forum here and on the lower left there is a bunch of forum links. Any question you have can be answered there. Right now I'm using esmith as a router, web server, firewall, ftp, email server(imp), picture server, print server, file server, and I'm sure others too. Stable as h3ll on my duron 600 @ 1G w/ 512MB pc133 mem. Fast, secure, stable, FREE. Perfect solution.

Any questions, PM me, I'll try to help.

Cigar

 

[Tanner]

CigarSmokedByClinton Thanks a lot for the link man! I'll be visiting it very frequently as I get mine setup and try to get it all patched up and stuff

 

[TechDreamer]

This is a great thread you started Tanner. Most of it's over my head, but that's nothing new for me. I've had one semester of Intro to Unix and no Linux experience. I have an old Digital Alpha XL266 that I've been running NT 4.0 on for years. I had decided to make this my Linux education machine and to make it do some work on a home network. E-Smith looked like the perfect solution, but I found out after some research that it has some pretty strict hardware requirements. It looks like it only runs on Intel architectures. I then thought of using it on an NEC 120mhz laptop, but E-Smith does not work with PCMCIA network cards. I have a docking station for it, but I think it only has ISA slots. ISA ethernet is also not supported by E-Smith. Red Hat and Compaq are going to release version 7.2 of their Distro this month (for Alpha), so I think I am going to try that out. I see people have hacked E-Smith and made it work with all kinds of unsupported stuff, but that kind of defeats the ease of use and simplicity of E-Smith. I think I might as well just use a full Distribution before trying to hack an Internet Appliance Distro.

 

[CigarSmokedByClinton]

I don't know where you get your info, tech, but I have it installed on a AMD machine with no problems at all. Install took 15 min and never asked for any drivers for ANYTHING. Everything is supported.

MB: abit KT7-RAID
CPU duron 600@1gig
MEM pc133 512MB
ATI vid card
sb live
40Gig HD

Smooth as silk. Maybe only an older versio did the intel only thing. Not the newest version.

Cigar

 

[Tanner]

yeah, and speakin' of ppl hackin' it to support other things, ppl have also found security holes in e-smith too! AHH! the VERY good side to that is the forums linky that Cigar gave me has patches for alllll of that stuff. ROCKON! I thought that forums was VERY informative!

well...I'm still tryin' to get one of my NICs to receive DHCP while the other is 10.0.0.1 hmmmmmmmmmm

One is an Acton SMC NIC
the other is a Linksys NE2000

both have drivers available for them in this distro....reinstalled w/ both of 'em stuck in there...but stilll, no receipt of an IP through DHCP...

 

[Workin']

I've used e-smith 5.1.2 for a few weeks now. It is really simple to use, totally stable, and if you can live within its limitations it is super-extra cool. Clark Connect looks similar but maybe not as integrated. I haven't tried it because it seems weak as an e-mail server.

I've been using it as a file/web/mail server and have been pleased with 2 exceptions:

Support for software RAID is not up to the level I need, and support for additional IDE controllers is also weak. My Highpoint HPT366 and Promise Ultra 100 controllers just will not work with it. Hacking the kernel is not my idea of fun.

Support for Appletalk file sharing works good except file sharing with my machine running Mac OS9 is problematic. About half the files I try to copy error out with a -50 Mac OS error. Updating netatalk under e-smith is not a trivial task, because the newer versions of netatalk have a whole slew of dependencies that need to be ironed out. If I have to mess with that stuff, then I might as well use a "real" distro.

But I'm still plodding along with it while I try to set up Debian on another machine. We'll see how it goes...

 

[TechDreamer]

cigarsmokedbyclinton-

I think you misunderstood me when I was talking about E-Smith compatibility. The Digital Alpha is a RISC architecture processor. It is not compatible with the Intel architecture like the AMD processors are. The Digital Alpha was a great architecture, but was killed by the merger between Compaq and Digital. These systems are pretty obscure now and I don't even see too many of them on E-Bay. I have noticed though that these systems have a pretty good following in the Linux community. Compaq still supports a lot of these systems on the high end and they have partnered with Red Hat on selling Linux "Solutions". Anyway I had been hoping that E-Smith would run on this system since I can't get much for it on E-Bay.

 

[CigarSmokedByClinton]

workin': I was able to set e-smith up on my maxtor(promise) ata 100 controller card. I'd assume that a highpoint controller would be close to the same. There was a few howtos I found which showed me how to do it.

Here's a link to one.

Cigar

 

[Workin']

<< workin': I was able to set e-smith up on my maxtor(promise) ata 100 controller card. I'd assume that a highpoint controller would be close to the same. There was a few howtos I found which showed me how to do it. >>

Thanks.

Now if I could figure out the problem with the Mac filesharing I would be all set.

 

[NoLegs]

Forgive the newbie post. I just moved from an area with a cable modem to an area where I have to get dsl (no cable modem service). I am waiting for the service to be hooked up (two weeks and counting). I am using a dial-up and having a hard time downloading the software. I really want to try this software. Does anyone know where I can purchase the CD version cheap or is their someone in the group that will send me a CD copy for $ plus shipping? Please email me at no_legs01@yahoo.com.

Thanks,

NoLegs

 

[TechDreamer]

nolegs-

I don't have any links for you right now, but I remember seeing a bunch of places selling the CD's for dirt. I am also on dialup and I might buy the CD's if I find a way to use this. I think you might want to look for links at the E-Smith site.

 

[Tanner]

well, I'm back and done graduating now...

I'll have to tackle this thing again sometime this week and try to get a diff. NIC in there or something. Reinstalling it doesn't take but a few minutes, and I'm sure setup would be a snap from the control panel through this PC, but I can't seem to get them to communicate as the E-Smith box isn't receiving an IP from our DHCP server... we'll see 'bout tha though

Anyone else got it up and running correctly yet?

 

[Workin']

the E-Smith box isn't receiving an IP from our DHCP server

I had the same problem. I just assigned it a static IP outside the range of addresses my DHCP server uses. Didn't try to get DHCP working on the e-smith box - it seemed that it would be happier being the DHCP server rather than a client.

I took e-smith off my test machine and have been setting up a Debian installation, which is going fairly well. At least AppleTalk file sharing works perfectly, unlike in e-smith. As does software RAID 5 and my motley collection of IDE controllers. Of course the setup is quite a bit more difficult...been doing lots of reading!

 

[Tanner]

I'm actually running through it now. I got the box to receive DHCP from our DHCP server (our=the university's) and got a nice static IP for the LAN side I'm excited. This is awesome

However, I can't figure out how to get my console up, or what to get it up in now...so I'm downloading the user's manuals now Hopefully, I'll get this thing up and running soon, the way I WANT it!

 

[Tanner]

well...I found ONE way...through HTTP...but I dont think that's as secure as OpenSSH

hmmmmmmmmmm