Emerlin Repeater Station PC (RPC)
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EMerlin Repeater Station PC (RPC) P. Burgess, Jodrell Bank Observatory 05/Feb/2004 (V1.3) Last Revision: 02/Aug/2005 V1.5e; 25/Sep/2008 v1.5f 1.Introduction. The Repeater PC is a straightforward ‘minimal’ PC for monitoring eMerlin fibre- optic repeater stations. It is intended normally to be accessed by dial-up modem. A local keyboard and display is provided. The unit operates under the Linux operating system. This document provides sufficient information to rebuild a system from scratch, although normally it will be provided set up. 2. Design Requirements: • Support Linux and dial-up modem, plus additional serial ports. • Provide simple on-site display and keyboard • Low cost and maintenance • Sustainable upgrade path to hardware changes These requirements may be met by a simple combination of off-the-shelf motherboard, CPU and memory components. Although very small single-board PCs are available, space is not at a premium, so a commercial 4Ux19in. rack mount case has been chosen. This case includes a keyboard and VGA (640x480) colour display. The additional cost of this hardware (most of the cost of the complete unit in fact) is justified by convenience and robustness. Jodrell VLBI has experience with Asus motherboards and AMD CPUs and finds them well-supported. We have attempted to select devices with known Linux compatibility. Choice of Modem: In particular there is a problem using internal modems under Linux. Most internal cards are now so-called ‘Winmodems’, i.e. they have minimal (or no) controller hardware, and requires Windows to replace it. There are a small number of devices which do have internal hardware, usually known as ‘Linmodems’,which have drivers, or may be configured, for Linux. After a series of tests we found the Sitecom DC-015 56kbps internal V92 (www.sitecom.com) modem to be reliable. 3. Software Requirements The requirement is for both operating system and user software to be maintainable by ourselves at minimum cost. The choices are between DOS, Windows NT or Linux. At the moment Jodrell has adopted the Linux system for its outstation control work as it is open-sourced, robust and predictable and does not incur license fees. There are numerous ‘distributions’ of Linux available with quite widely varying levels of detail changes. We require a simple, easily-maintainable one that is likely to be around in some form in the future. Slackware Linux was chosen for its simple install process, small number of source disks, and close-to-Unix functionality. 4. Component Specifications Rack Case 4U - Wordsworth EC-1040BATX/832AP wit DM64T display and Main Board - Asus A7N266VME-SE skt A incl. Ethernet Realtek 8201 PHY Nvidia AGP graphics CPU - AMD XP-1800+fan Memory - 256 Mbyte generic DDR SDRAM module Modem - ‘Sitemodem’ DC-015 internal PCI card Hard Drive - 40Gb Maxtor IDE in rack carrier module Cdrom - Samsung internal IDE OEM 5. General Assembly The ATX motherboard installs directly in the rack case. Our version had a slight misalignment between the rear panel opening and the metal plate insert supplied with the motherboard, fixed by slicing one end off the panel. The DM640T (TFT) colour display is designed to fit directly into the left side of the front panel. The supplied VGA cable is used to pass the display connector to the lower rear panel. The connection between the VGA input and and the motherboard video output is completed by a JB-made 15-to-15 way VGA-D connector about 30cm long. The hard drive was installed in a low-cost sliding module rack (Samcheer SC27) in the upper 5-1/4 drive bay space, connected to IDE 0 (master). The cdrom then fits in the middle bay (connect to IDE1), leaving the lowest bay free. The drive jumper should be set to ‘CS’ (Cable Select) for both units – default. (nb some units may be configured with the CD as ‘master’ and the drive as ‘slave’ – check if changing the drives). The modem is located in PCI Slot 2 (centre white slot) The Vscom serial card should be in Slot 3 (outer / furthest from PSU). Slot 1 (nearest PSU) and the brown AGP slot are unused. The integral keyboard and ‘mouse’ touchplate are connected via included mini-DIN (PS/2 style) connectors to the motherboard at the rear panel. There may be a couple of spare ‘sensor’ cables in the case: they may be tied out of the way. Some units were later fitted with a third 9-pin serial port connector on one of the previously-unused card slots, which allows access to the second onboard Com port (Com2/ttyS1). The 25-connector is not used, but could be internally reconnected in place of the 9-pin if needed. 6. Initial Testing Power-up should be performed, checking for correct fan operation and display illumination. The display will normally attempt to configure itself but there is an auto/ manual option on its menu. Check that the BIOS detects the hard drive,floppy drive (if fitted) and cdrom correctly. Power-down again. 7. Installation of Linux Operating System This section describes a ‘from scratch’ installation and may not be needed if an existing system can be copied (See Section 13). Currently we use Slackware Linux 9.1, requiring 2 CD’s. BIOS Settings (required) : (Hit ‘Del’ during startup) (a) ‘Audio’ on-board device set to ‘disabled’ under ‘Chip Config’ menu. (b) ‘MIDI’ port and irq disabled under IO submenu. (Frees up an irq) (c) PCI submenu: set Slot 3 (Vscom board) to IRQ 11; others on ‘auto’ (d) If the USB is not required, it may be disabled under ‘IO’ submenu. (e) Plug-and-Play OS: select ‘No’. (f) Virus Alert: Select ‘Disabled’ Download the Slackware Linux installation ISO CD images from http://www.slackware.com/ - or locate the systems on the VLBI 'newton' server in the 'Projects' area. Make two CD’s using ‘Nero’ on the VLBI Windows PC or 'Brasero' (Linux) Boot the RPC with Slackware Disk 1 in CD drive Use Linux ‘fdisk’ or ‘cfdisk’ to configure ‘/’ or root partition 5000MB Linux native (hda1) Swap partition 512MB type 82 (Linux swap) (hda2) Divide remaining space into 2 native partitions (hda3,4) Mount the ‘/home’ area under hda2 so it is separate from the OS. Select ‘Install Everything’ option Format partitions as ‘ext3’ (Journalling filesystem) Do not set up for UK keyboard , use US default. Select timezone UTC0 You can configure the network at this point, but it won’t work. Make a LILO install using the MBR (master boot record) option 7.1 Rebuilding the Kernel With the current default kernel options, the Vscom serial board may not operate, as the kernel parameters for multiport serial i/o may not be turned on (depends on the default kernel provided). It is safest to asume the kernel will need rebuilding if the Vscom card is to be used. See Section11 for more detail. 8. Configuring Linux Download and install network driver (may not be needed with later Linux distributions) from ‘nVidia.com’ for the ‘nforce’ chipset, currently: http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_display_ia32_1.0-7667.html file: NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7667-pkg1.run This file should be available locally on a service kit/CD/hard drive. The ‘.run’ file may be run by typing it or prefixing with ‘sh’. (This install routine requires the Linux kernel build information to be present, for the correct kernel.) Nb: older versions: If a ‘tar.gz’ file has been provided: - tar –xzpf in /usr/local - cd to new directory ‘nforce/nvnet’ - follow install instructions: - ‘make’ - ‘make install’ - add line ‘alias eth0 nvnet’ to /etc/modules.conf - run ‘netconf’ to set up any other parameters - the ‘nvnet.o’ module should load on reboot. (check with lsmod). - Note: the first line of ‘modules.conf’ may get overwritten in 9.1 below. (It is not necessary to make the audio and video driver parts, although it should do no harm). Set the standard root password Make a user account for ‘oper’ using ‘adduser’ with standard password Disable any unused startup files in ‘/etc/rc.d/’ (rename or ‘chmod –x’). Edit /etc/lilo/conf’ and remove the ‘prompt’ line. The network is useful for local testing and is usually configured as host ‘emrpc’, IP 102.168.101.8x, subnetmask 255.255.0.0, Gateway 192.168.101.10, DNS 130.88.24.36 using the ‘netconfig’ script under Slackware Setup. The settings can be edited manually in /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf 8.1 TFT Display and Xwindows The unit normally runs remotely or requires only console access. A simple ‘X’ configuration will be available for a 15in. external display or the TFT, although the latter is difficult to use under ‘X’. As root run ‘xdm’. After it starts, a login prompt is provided: log in as ‘oper’ or other normal user account. To stop X, as root ‘killall xdm’. 9. Install and Configure Modem Driver 9.1 HSF Modem Driver (Conexant Chipset) Download the free ‘HSFModem’ package from linuxant.com See: http://www.linuxant.com/drivers/hsf/downloads-license.php File: hsfmodem-7.18.00.03full.tar.gz Place a copy of the tar file in /usr/local and ‘tar –xvpf’ it. Cd to the new directory ‘HSFmodemxxxx..’ Install the driver as per the README/Install files. Perform the initial configuration stage Check that a new device in /dev/has appeared (‘/dev/ttySHSF0’) Check for ‘modem’ link: ls –ls /dev/modem Check that the ‘eth0 alias nvnet’ line is still correct in modules.conf. Rebuilding the kernel will require an uninstall/re-install. To uninstall do ‘make unistall’ in the hsfmmodem source directory 9.2 ‘mgetty’ TTY Driver Download the latest ‘mgetty’ TTY driver for Linux (mgetty-1.1.3?) See ftp://alpha.greenie.net/pub/mgetty/source/.