Building a FreeBSD Appliance With NanoBSD
Appliance:
A device or instrument designed to perform a specific function, especially an electrical device, such as a toaster, for household use.
Computer appliance:
A specialized server that is designed for ease of installation and maintenance. Appliances have their hardware and software bundled in the product, so all applications are pre-installed. The appliance is plugged into an existing network and can begin working (almost) immediately.
Appliance example (1)
Firewall / Router
Appliance example (2)
VPN gateway
Appliance example (3)
Data Collection Engine
Appliance Design
Hardware considerations
Interfaces Performance Moving parts vs. Solid state Power demand (& cost of ownership) Physical (temperature, size, vibration) Cost
Rotation: just say no!
#1 cause of failure in embedded systems: Something stopped rotating
Disks will crash.
And generate heat. And fill the interior with dust.
Fans will fail.
Rotation: just say no!
#1 cause of failure in embedded systems: Something stopped rotating
Disks will crash.
And generate heat. And fill the interior with dust.
Fans will fail.
Disks
Disks die from old age and heat
Some die young
Laptop disks are tougher than desktop disks Beware of duty cycle
Many disks only designed for 8h/d duty 10 - 40 C
Disks need civilized temperatures
Disks don't like vibration and shock
Flash storage
Indestructible in read-only usage Flash cells die after N erase operations Flash adaptation layer
Wear leveling distributes the damage Bad sector handling tries to recover Bigger media last longer than small media Good, but not perfect remedy.
Counting flash writes
200.000 writes, worst case:
Superblock updated 1/s = 55 hours lifetime File written 1/m = 138 days lifetime File written 1/h = 22 years lifetime File written 1/d = 547 years lifetime
Flash Adaptation Layer
Attempt to wear out flash cells equally fast Logical->Physical mapping Bad bit/sector handling Works much better if you tell it about erase ...or do large sequential writes (camera)
FAL's MTBF
Conservative rule of thumb:
Multiply write guarantee by free/used ratio.
Example:
200k writes per cell 100MB used on 4GB media
200k * (4GB-100MB)/100MB = 200k * 39 = 7.8 Mwrites per logical sector.
Industrial Flash ?
Expensive Guaranteed number of writes
Typical: 10x commercial (~2M writes per cell)
Good EMC protection -40...+70 C
Consumer Flash
Cheap Vague promises of durability
20k...200k writes
Before or after FAL ? Guaranteed or worst case ? Per sector or per photo ?
Often faster than industrial flash Easy to get hold of
Power budget
1W * 24h * 365d * .25 $/kWh ~= 2$/Wy
Machine Watt [avg] USD/year Real Server 220 440 Light server 120 240 Desktop 60 120 Mini-ITX 30 60 4 8 Soekris
Power-over-ethernet: max 12.95W
4W = Power options
Solar power
Depends on your lattitude/climate. $100 Lead-Acid -> 2+ days without power. Runs on 6 D-size batteries Remember surge-protection.
Battery backup
Portable
Car/motorcycle
Human Factors
User interaction when no screen available
telnet/ssh into box HTML/webserver interface Serial console LED LCD displays
Hardware solutions
Flashing a hint
The LED(4) device driver can be used to signal using a LED, lamp, foghorn etc.
/bin/echo d13 > /dev/led/error
More LED(4) features
/bin/echo 0 > /dev/led/error /bin/echo 1 > /dev/led/error /bin/echo f > /dev/led/error /bin/echo sAaAaAcEaEaEcAaAaA \ > /dev/led/error /usr/games/morse -l \ +++ OUT OF CHEESE +++ \ > /dev/led/error
LCD displays
Readily available with usable interfaces
Serial, USB, parallel, etc Remember to check eBay for bargains
Expensive compared to computer
Mechanical/Mounting issues Also need a keyboard/keypad
Cables and interfaces
Beware of ground-loops
serial/parallel/usb/gpio/power (Non-POE) Ethernet is isolated. Surgeprotection on inputs Drivers on outputs In particular POE!
GPIO pins are sensitive
Lightning protection if outdoors.
What is NanoBSD ?
NanoBSD is just FreeBSD Compiled from FreeBSD source tree No cut corners. Ports/packages works like they always do. If you can do it with FreeBSD, you can do it with NanoBSD.
NanoBSD features
Everything is read-only at run-time. Safe to pull power-plug.
No fsck necessary. Unless you remove it yourself.
No missing functionality
Easy to build and customize.
NanoBSD recipe
diskless(8)
Gives boot time configurable R/O runtime. Choice of which code image to boot. src/tools/tools/nanobsd.sh At no extra cost!
Boot0(8)
One shell script with light magic
A few convenience features.
How to build a NanoBSD image
# # # #
cd sh cd dd
/usr/src/tools/tools/nanobsd nanobsd.sh /usr/obj/nanobsd.full if=_.disk.full of=/dev/da0 bs=64k
How to customize Nanobsd
# sh nanobsd.sh -c myconf.nano # cat myconf.nano NANO_NAME=myconf CONF_WORLD=' NO_CXX=YES ' NANO_KERNEL=MYKERNEL FlashDevice Sandisk 512M #
NanoBSD disk layouts
code#1 code#1 code#1 code#1 boot0 /cfg code#2 /cfg code#2 /cfg data /cfg data
/cfg magic
The config partition contains files for
/etc
Partition briefly mounted r/o during boot. Remember to save files when you edit:
# vi /etc/resolv.conf [...] # mount /cfg # cp /etc/resolv.conf /cfg # umount /cfg
Configuring the media size
NANO_MEDIASIZE=1048576
Count of sectors. Diskinfo(8) is useful.
NANO_SECTS=32 NANO_HEADS=16
Necessary for some BIOS'es which can't use packet mode in boot0(8).
Configuring the media size
FlashDevice vendor
ident
Small library of common device data See .../nanobsd/FlashDevice.sub
FlashDevice SanDisk 1G FlashDevice Soekris NET4526
etc.
Controlling Media Layout
NANO_IMAGES={1,2} NANO_CODESIZE={0,sectors} NANO_CONFSIZE={sectors} NANO_DATASIZE={0,sectors}
Zero means autosize Explicit sizing is more future-proof.
Build/Install/World options
CONF_BUILD='...'
Passed to buildworld Passed to installworld Both buildworld & installworld.
CONF_INSTALL='...'
CONF_WORLD='...'
Customizing
List of customizing commands.
NB: commands without arguments!
Use shell functions:
cust_foo () ( echo bar=topless > \ ${NANO_WORLDDIR}/etc/foo ) customize_cmd cust_foo
Size of RAM disks
/etc and /var are md(4) [malloc] disks.
Default size: 5MB Change size:
NANO_RAM_ETCSIZE=20480 NANO_RAM_TMPVARSIZE=40960
Default customize functions
customize_cmd cust_comconsole
Serial console, no gettys on VGA (/dev/ttyv*) Allow root to login with ssh(1) Installs files from .../nanobsd/Files Contains sysadm convenience scripts
customize_cmd cust_allow_ssh_root
customize_cmd cust_install_files
Sysadm on Nanobsd
change_password
Changes roots password, saves on /cfg Saves ssh host keys on /cfg
save_sshkeys
updatep1 updatep2
Updates codepartition.
Updating software
Myhost#
nc -l 2222 < _.disk.image
# nc myhost 2222 | sh updatep1 # ftp myhost get _.disk.image | sh updatep1 # ssh myhost cat _.disk.image.gz | zcat | sh updatep1
Living with NanoBSD
Prepare for software updates:
# tail /etc/rc.local if [ -f /etc/ntpns ] ; then /etc/ntpns -c /etc/ntpns.conf else /sbin/ntpns -c /etc/ntpns.conf fi
Nailing NanoBSD to the wall
