Table of Contents

Maintaining the Image

The following is a description of how RussellSenior has been working on the software running on the metrixes. When I encountered them, all of the metrixes already had the BenjaminJencks firmware, http://cornerstone.personaltelco.net/~brj/metrix-missnet.img. It is setup with all 3 interfaces bridged, and br0 set to 10.11.104.5/22.referenced above.

Updating in place

The metrix firmware is a minimized Debian distribution. The /etc/apt/sources.list include these archives:

deb http://www.backports.org/debian/ stable kernel-2.6
deb http://debian.oregonstate.edu/debian woody main
deb http://security.debian.org woody/updates main

As long as the metrix has access to the internet it can be updated using the standard Debian methods.

# remountrw
# apt-get update
# apt-get upgrade
# apt-get clean
# remountro

For my personal sanity, I have installed "less". For testing/debugging, I have installed "tcpdump", and to keep the clock remotely in sync I have installed "ntpdate" (this seems to be hanging briefly during bootup, not sure why).

Building Software

In order to incrementally build software (e.g., new kernels, madwifi drivers, utilities) for the metrix, one needs a build environment that corresponds to the one on the metrix. My initial attempt to build the madwifi utilities produced partially-broken results because I failed to do this (binaries were linked against symbols that didn't exist in the metrix-installed libraries). Here are the steps I went through to create and use the build environment.

The host for this work was a Debian/unstable system.

Unpacking the Image

Creating the Build Environment

Install toolchain

For good measure, we'll sync up currently installed packages with the Debian archives, but first we'll modify the /etc/apt/sources.list to accomodate subversion we're going to need soon. Add subversion to the backports line:

Building a Kernel

Building the Madwifi-ng modules and utilities

Building /etc/network/interfaces

Installing the new software

Creating a new image

Installing an image

Flashing overview

Preparing a kernel for netbooting

Setting up services

Netbooting


[CategoryDocumentation]

MississippiMetrixConfiguration (last edited 2009-01-31 02:10:15 by RussellSenior)