The perfect Bubba

[helder]

This post is not a request! These are just some random thoughts...

The other day I found my self thinking about the Bubba server and what a great machine it is.

Next thing I thought of ways to improve it, without more power drawn:

• Think about a Bubba based on the same motherboard of the asus eee pc;
• A solid state "hard disk" => total silence;
• Two NICs;
• Serial port (with no hacks);
• And a LCD screen neatly mounted on the Bubba server case...

The resulting Bubba would be a bit more expensive...

I didn't stop here, since Bubba is really a server, it should have at least an UPS. It's hard to find an UPS similar in shape to the Bubba server, so the ideal would be having an Excito made UPS, exactly in the same shape as the Bubba server, that would fit under it, making it into one unit.

Since I'm talking about Excito products, we can think about ways of upgrading this new Bubba, since the eee pc has a PCI Express Mini Card connector, one could envisage a way of simply stacking the upgrades on top of the original Bubba (with a bit of hardware engineering), for instance extra HDs, DVD writers, TV tuners (to use Bubba as a media center) etc... All this without using extra cables.

I'm sure I had other ideas, I just can't remember right now.

Helder

[tor]

Hi helder,

Very good comments thx.

Would just like to comment, that even if we might not comment on all suggestions you have we read them carefully and really appreciate them.

You can count on a bunch of them implemented in the next gen Bubba

/Tor

[Ubi]

Although most features are, imho, a bit over-the-top for what I believe bubba is meant to do, the serial interface is definitely a plus. It sucks that you have to reinstall just because you made a config error in sshd.conf

=(

Ubi

[John W]

It sucks that you have to reinstall just because you made a config error in sshd.conf

=(
Ubi

You don't need to do that anymore. Use the minimal bootimage to fix ut!

[Ubi]

Although the minimal image saves the HD, I believe it still overwrites the systemOS which in my case is highly modified as I run Bubba as a monitoring tool.

[tor]

ubi,

The minimal image does no install anything what so ever. It is only intended as a rescue image when things go horribly wrong.

Use it to boot Bubba from the usb-stick. Log in via ssh, static ip 192.168.0.50, mount the disk and do what ever needed to fix the problem. Short info on the image here http://update.excito.net/install/minimal/README.TXT

/Tor

[Ubi]

ah !

I completely misunderstood that. Excellent!

(how about a wiki for all this btw? There's an awful lot of usefull info accumulating in this forum but finding it will be increasingly difficult. )

[tor]

Hi Ubi and others,

Regarding the wiki. I think i have mentioned this before. We have thought about a wiki. But atm managing that would most likely take to much time from our precious resources. Thats why we settled for the howto forum where we have tried to collect useful info. Anyone is welcome to contribute there, point out useful posts that should be moved there.

We also actually have a wiki installed and ready to use. So if anyone is interested in edit pages on it. Contact us/me and i will give you a useraccount. Then we can see if we can get some useful information organized on it.

/Tor

[Ubi]

Hi Tor

I see your point and completely agree with it. I'm sorry I meist your earlier remark on that subject. My suggestion would be to
(1) wait with a wiki untill etch is ready
(2) as you said, only allow a few people that you trust to edit

As a 6+ year linux admin I hope to qualify for that last group, but it really is your discretion to choose. I think we all agree that your time is better spent on developing bubba than on admin-ing a wiki.

Ubi

[PeterTuson]

I would like to see solid state storage with the bubba engineered for even less power consumption and completely silent but with more USB ports.

[wertigon]

Put another one down for SSD here; though, today it's probably too expensive, but it's a nice-to-have feature.

I also agree that an UPS with the same form-factor would be a nice feature to have. Given the Bubba's low power requirements, it doesn't have to be more than a battery and some sort of voltage protection.

And two NICs, yes please! This way I can hook up say, a network dedicated for monitoring stuff.

Software wise, I'd still like to see an XMPP server, as far as I know it's the absolutely easiest way to get OpenID to work; see http://xmppid.net/ (yes, I know one can install it, but it'd still be nice to have in default.) Other than that though, it does everything one could wish from it.

Well, that's about it I think. =)

[Ubi]

the Solid state is discussed in other threads already. In short: SSD don't allow many write cycles and are thus incompatible with mail and web servers or unix-style logfiles. The only solution is to strongly increasy memory so that the temp files can be run from that. It would indeed be cool however.
Some info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_state_disk

Ubi