Sc09-ed-prog-laptop-usb-images

From Education

Updated Nov 2009 Updates below.

Nov 2008

As of Nov 2008 this page is just miscellaneous notes and ideas put up hodge-podge.

• VMWare had its ups and downs, but overall seems to be largely a success
  • Downs
    • Did not start automatically, so a hoop to get it started. Software "not there".
    • USB keys sometimes attached to host, sometimes already to vmware.
    • Wireless bridge not available, only wired (VMWare bug?)
    • Takes time to boot not one, but two operating systems
  • Ups
    • Could prepare software as an image.
    • Seriously saved time and effort passing image out on-site
• Suggestions for next year
  • Host is Linux → Can administer much easier remotely.
    • SSHD and SSH "Master" key installed.
    • Should we install RDP or some software to remotely take over rogue machines? (To date, we've had one machine become a spamhost.)
  • To avoid confusion, boot virtual instance automatically when host starts.
  • Bridging the networks is important, so guests are seen as unique from hosts.
  • Put VMWare image on server a month prior to conference; let presenters RDP in to install their own software.
    • Presenters will get a feel for the software and issues prior to the conference.
    • Presenters will be able to deal with (most) license issues prior to imaging.
    • Presenters know better how to test their software than we do.
    • We don't have to spend egregious amounts of time looking for software on sites with which we aren't familiar
    • We don't have to get our email addresses on spam lists.
    • Note: We'll have to figure out the logistics of time-splicing their time
• Consider Sun thin clients with VirtualBox and a small local cluster to provide the server-side horsepower.
  • Since v2.1 of VirtualBox, I agree with and second this.
  • We need to make sure that the machines we get (from Intel?) have the VT-x/AMD-V CPU instructions. Absolutely mandatory for any semblance of usability, given recent experiences.
  • If it turns out well, I'd like to put on the table a suggestion that we support VirtualBox, even if only a token amount. Or, perhaps not Vbox, but one or some of the OS tools we use. I suggest VBox because I personally thought the virtualization solution was tremendous last year.

Once this and the process gets formalized, we can start a software list below, a la SCEd'08's page.

Nov 2009

We've learned some more bits over last years process.

Technology

• Switches: We need some faster switches. Our last two experiences bringing our own (Earlham) hardware has shown that it seriously degrades under load. Save that packing weight for something else.
• Hardware samples. The week is still young, but we think having Linux as a host OS will be good. However, without hardware samples prior to arriving on-site, we have a couple of systems without wireless. Another system's touchpad doesn't work. These are issues that can only be sussed out with physical time in front of a machine.
• Following on the heels of hardware samples, if we're doing the work of imaging, we need more time. Arriving here a day before is only so helpful. Two days is historically what we need, and we missed that this year.
• Phone home script. We realized that remote administration is mucho importanto. We created a phone home script. This is something good, that we'll save away.
• Need to ask computer lender (Intel) for consistent 64-bit. We have a couple Core Duo machines, which, it turns out, are i686, but have the VMX flag. That was confusing to us until we realized that some machines were 32-bit. We need 64-bit machines.
• In retrospect, the combination of our NFS choice to install machines after PXE was poor. NFS is not nearly as ... robust as HTTP. We need to do a minimal install on the laptops, then apt-get install the rest. (Apt is 100% HTTP based.)
• Server: our NFS choice was further exasperated by not-so-powerful hardware. We need a beefy server. In today's talk, that means at least 4G ram and Gigabit ethernet. My laptop was able to install twice as many clients at a time as 2 2G servers.

Brainstorm ideas as we get them

• Plan ahead with multicast
  • Still requires multiple images for different hardware
• Do a minimal install with a netinstall distro, then apt-get the rest (HTTP) solution
  • Still incurs bandwidth issues and bottleneck at server
• Install minimal install, include bittorrent client, and create a torrent to download necessary package. Then post-download script to install everything.
  • Still needs setup, helps the bandwidth issues, but reduces time to look at hardware.