SFF server platform

[Matthew Carpenter]

David Bandel wrote:

>On Sat, 5 Feb 2005 18:12:22 -0500, Kurt Wall <kwall at kurtwerks.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>On Saturday 05 February 2005 17:47, Tony Alfrey wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>David Bandel wrote:
>>>      
>>>
>>>>I rent boxes like this.  Here's what I get:
>>>>at CaseOutlet (http://www.caseoutlet.com/):
>>>>ITX 2677R using a CL1000 motherboard (two ethernet ports).  I then
>>>>put in either another ethernet card or a frame relay card (you'll
>>>>need to buy the riser card for this).  I buy neither CD-ROM nor
>>>>floppy, but do get either a 40Gb hdd or (better) a 1Gb flash RAM,
>>>>128Mb RAM.
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>Very interesting link.
>>>Very very newbie questions:
>>>a.  I assume that, with an appropriate wireless card, one can use
>>>this box to form an all wireless network and avoid the extra ethernet
>>>port? b.  w/ no CD rom, how do you load an OS?  Format and load the
>>>HD elsewhere first?
>>>      
>>>
>>I don't know how David does it, but, if you get the flash RAM, you load
>>the OS onto the flash and pop that into the case. That's what some our
>>customers at work do. In some cases, we create the flash image by
>>loading it over an Ethernet connection. I had one board, though, where
>>I actually had to "cat" the 4MB kernel and RAM disk image out the
>>serial port at 9600bps. The board's boot loader wouldn't handle a
>>serial connection faster than 9600bps...
>>
>>In the embedded space, it's quite common to load the entire OS onto
>>flash and use flash as the disk. Boots real fast that way...
>>    
>>
>
>Loading can be a bit tricky, but I use the IDE connector and that
>allows you to treat it like a hard drive.
>
>Ciao,
>
>David A. Bandel
>  
>
Are you using Debian (or an offchute) for these systems?  I know you use 
Debian overall (IINM).  What do you use for keeping your systems 
up-to-date?  Some form of Cron-Apt ?  How you handle kernel-upgrades?  I 
assume you don't touch every box you maintain every time there are 
updates to be applied...  Also, given that mane updates are actually 
feature-upgrades, have you run into "new features" or new versions which 
break existing apps?

Thanks,
Matt