Well after installing 7.502 on my SG30 about a year ago I figured it was time to move up to v8 and see how well this old box could handle a little bigger load. I went into it wanting to fix a few things that didn't make me happy that may have stemmed from how ASG was installed on the hard drive.
If you just want to get to the download and install it without reading the technical babble of what was involved, skip down near the smiley face towards the bottom and go for it! Otherwise..... Read on for the rest of my messy, boring, nerdy post....
Instead of installing this from outside the SG30 I decided I wanted to run the installer from a modified CD on the SG30 itself, via a remote serial console. Here's a rough outline of what was required to make that happen.
NOTE: If you don't already have a serial cable for your SG30, this is the one I picked up and I can say it works great with a null modem cable between the DB25 and the computer: Mac serial cable from Monoprice
The installer is based off the asg-8.102-2.1.iso with some modifications to make it usable on the SG30. For starters the syslinux boot loader has been modified to work with a serial console. (All serial communications are set at 115200,8,N,1) All of the modifications to boot the installer properly were done to the "initramfs.gz" and "isolinux.cfg" file in the "isolinux" folder on the installer CD. "Intro.txt" was also modified to reflect how to send F1 & F3 over the serial connection.
The onboard LCD should display some information to the user as to where it is in the installation process, "Running Astaro Installer" being the last thing displayed before the reboot occurs.
Support for the ethernet devices is already baked in but needed some modules loaded for them. This was as simple as adding the e100 and 8139too modules at boot time, they'll also be loaded on the installed system then.
There are also several other modifications of the CD boot process that allow the installer to work over a serial redirected console. In the middle of the boot process before the installer starts it actually drops you to a bash prompt so you can make any modifications you'd like before launching the installer. If you just want to continue on normally, type "exit" and enter and it will start the installer.
In the installer on a regular console you can switch between virtual terminals for the log and a shell prompt. These are the ALT-F2 and ALT-F4 functions in the installer and the modifications I made render those screens unusable. By dropping to the shell prompt before launching the installer it will allow users to copy those files and others to make any other changes before going into the installer.
After it's installed on first boot I've inserted a script that will setup the rest of the system. The /etc/init.d/rc3.d/S00boot.sglcd file is responsible for setting the system up for use and displaying the boot message on the LCD screen at startup. The other file to go along with the script is the tar archive: /home/login/magnia-lcd-support-files.tar.gz
S00boot.sglcd and the tar archive are the only files that are injected into the installed file system by the Astaro installer. These files were injected into the "install.tar" file located in the "install" folder on the CD. Basically at boot S00sglcd.boot quickly checks for 3 files on the system and if they're not there, it performs the needed action to install them. It does this at each boot so if Astaro makes changes, it should be able to recover itself after a reboot.
One of the things is checks for is the existence of the /sa2 folder, if it's not found, it extracts the tar archive to /sa2 on the file system. Inside that folder are all the files required for LCD support along with other support files. After the /sa2 folder is populated, start up scripts get copied and linked in /etc/init.d to handle the boot changes for the SG. It's important to note that I focused on NOT modifying ANY of Astaro's preexisting bootup scripts this time. I placed the links in the proper locations to give LCD feedback on the boot process and make the booting process as smooth as possible.
The included files and extras take up total about 4-5MB on the hard drive so space shouldn't be an issue. There's also a customization PDF, and some other files some might be interested in rummaging through in the /sa2 path...
After your booted up you'll notice the LCD displaying the time and date, you can also press the soft button to get a switch view showing active ports on the back panel. The power button is also functional and will power the system off safely. When a power off is requested from the web admin portal it will send the needed commands to the LCD controller to power the box off as well. The LCD will show things like restarting and shutdown sequences, nothing crazy but it's not just sitting there displaying "BIOS POST!" the whole time.
Some of the boot process and LCD usage is logged, the front power button being a notable one. When a shutdown is initiated from the panel it places an entry in the Device Agent log. (Accessible from web admin) Also a few other things are logged there at startup, basically what the scripts see as the system comes to life. Mostly this is just a "wait" state in the startup script to make sure the NICs are alive before reporting on the LCD that the system is "up." I noticed a few times that the IPsec / L2TP daemon reported it wasn't running if the scripts didn't look for the NICs to be alive, easy fix for the problem.
After it's up and alive you should have a fully working ASG v8 system on your Toshiba Magnia! I've been quite happy with it's performance with 1GB of ram on the box (maxed). CPU usage hovers around 5-10% usage when just dealing with traffic and packet inspection, nothing but update tasks get the cpu above 40-50%.
If you load this up, PLEASE come back and report your findings here!! [:D]
You can get the CD image here: Toshiba Magnia Astaro v8 Install CD
(The image is across 3 RAR files that have recovery records with them, use WinRAR to repair them if recovery is needed)
If you're interested in any of the other SG related files I have: HaTaX's SG30 Files
Other thoughts on the SG30 running/installing ASG v8:
Someone posted how to make a bootable flash drive to install astaro from. I gave it a quick shot and didn't have much success with it on the SG30. It does support the boot from it so I'd guess with a little work it could be done. People may want to try and monkey with this, so the shell before the installer will allow you to get around the lack of being able to ALT-F2 inside the installer. This might work better keeping in mind the ehci-hcd issue I had with the 3G modem.
I've been playing around with the 3G modem feature on the SG30 and it seems it will work quite well with just a few simple modifications. I'll look into rolling these into a new installer soon. Namely the ehci-hcd module is causing problems and made my system hang up at boot with my MiFi 2200 plugged in. I added a script to run just before Astaro's S15 script that performs the usb_modeswitch on the device, and it looks like it resolves the issue and I can see it in the web interface.
Had an issue with v7 on the SG30 that would randomly come up with I/O journal errors and lock the system up. I am hoping installing it directly on the hardware with all of the "stock" items loading correctly and functioning will help with this issue. Most of the time this means a bad HDD, but I tried 3 different drives of which I know 2 are definitely good. Just a reboot every week got around this so we'll see how v8 being properly installed helps make it over 7-10 days.
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