How to build a small Linux computer

[Bert]

Hi all,

After I had published some pictures of my homebuilt mini computer on Yahoo, I started receiving some nice comments and questions.

Now, Laurent ( forum name: lvds) asked me if I could write a Howto.
Well, here it is:

Building a Puppy Box

Hope you like it. For many of you experienced geeks, it will not teach a lot of new things.I tried to keep new enthousiasts in mind while writing the page.

My "signature" used to point to the yahoo photos. It will link to the above page from now on.

Best regards,
Bert

[mbutts]

Great article!!! It would be nice if other puppy people would share what they have done on homebrewing a computer. We have the "my puppy is more gorgeous than yours", maybe we could have a thread in the forum for "I built it myself" showing off our memebers hardware building abilities. I for one am very much for low power low cost computers. People like Raffy help to make thin clients work, and any projects that show creativeness and an ability to use something frugal and inovative always peaks my interest. One thing that i found interesting is this.
http://www.xpcgear.com/16in1fceplte.html
This is an example of a card reader that can fit in a floppy slot. Newer computers already have this, but its great to know that you can add something like this to older ones too! Best of all, they are cheap and sold all over the place on the net. I have been using an external card reader and the wakepup floppy to boot off of a sd card. It works great and takes up very little size. I have seen some of the pcmcia card reader for laptops and would like to try that some day. Anything that is low power, low noise, and small always gets my attention.

[BarryK]

That's great! I read through it all! Presented as an entertaining story.

[lvds]

Hi Bert,

It's great to share such a good story !
I hope it will encourage many other users to build their own computer and even enhance the system !

By the way, it will be great if you have time to report how our customized distro works (or not) on your home computer so we can improve them

Best regards,
Laurent.

[tempestuous]

not suitable for high end graphical apps and games

Your motherboard probably has a VIA Unichrome graphics chip. With the Unichrome 3D graphics driver installed, your graphics performance will increase dramatically. Use MU's 3D-Control-Center
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=14463
DVD playback will then work fine. Basic 3D games might work, too.

And forum member dvw86 also built a small Puppy computer based on a VIA processor - http://puppylinux.org/wikka/MiniITX

[Bert]

Thank you all for the compliments. Much appreciated!

[Q]

that looks so cool .
here is another idea instead of building one.buy this $139
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS5566172390.html
wipeout vector and put puppy on it

[Getnikar]

Great story. However isn't the life of the flash card somewhat limited to a few tens of thousands of io's? Therefore the system will need to be completely re-installed every few weeks/months/days!! into a new flash card?

[HairyWill]

Great story. However isn't the life of the flash card somewhat limited to a few tens of thousands of io's? Therefore the system will need to be completely re-installed every few weeks/months/days!! into a new flash card?

This isn't a problem.
If you set it up correctly changes will only be written to the card once every 30 minutes or so.

[Bert]

Great story. However isn't the life of the flash card somewhat limited to a few tens of thousands of io's? Therefore the system will need to be completely re-installed every few weeks/months/days!! into a new flash card?

Hi Getnicar,

That would be the case if the flash card had to work like a hard disk, constantly reading / writing. But Puppy Linux has a unique solution, called "frugal install".. When Puppy is booted, everything is copied to RAM memory. So everything happens in Ram, saving ( writing) to the card only periodically. This used to be once every 30 minutes -and at shutdown of course-. The new Puppy 2.16 auto-saves every 5 minutes or so, effectively "flushing" the Ram, So, theoretically, the card's life time will be six times shorter with the latest version of Puppy Linux. I have no idea whether this will be noticable in reality. In fact, I would be most interested, if someone more at home in these matters could shed some light on this!

[Getnikar]

In fact, I would be most interested, if someone more at home in these matters could shed some light on this!

Well the only info I know of is that my flash card on my camera lasted for about 2 years, 2000 photos, and maybe 200 photo download sessions to the computer (with photos cleared), before the card started developing dead spots. It was still useable but some pics were corrupted. In a computer environment the filesystem would be corrupted when the first storage error occurred. I suppose fsck might isolate dead blocks, but there would still be loss of data/files, and therefore likely software/system corruption.

[Pizzasgood]

But Puppy Linux has a unique solution, called "frugal install"..

For clarification, that flushing behavior is unrelated to "frugal". All a frugal install means is storing the main files from the cd on the harddrive and booting directly from them with GRUB, rather than booting from a CD. So just because you have a frugal install doesn't mean it will do the periodic saving. That only happens when you're running from flash media. I run a frugal install on a normal SATA harddrive, so it accesses the drive directly.

You can also change the frequency of saves. The file to edit would be /usr/sbin/savepuppyd.

[Bert]

Thanks for the clarification PG!

I should have mentioned I was talking about flash cards, not normal hard drives.

This is what I found in /usr/sbin/savepuppyd:

Code: Select all

#check PMEDIA is usbflash or ideflash...
LOOPDELAY=6
SLEEPTIME=300 #save every 30 minutes.
#if not a flash media, can save more frequently...
#[ "`echo -n "$PMEDIA" | grep "flash"`" = "" ] && SLEEPTIME=50 #save every 5 minutes.
#v2.16rc ...above line is not completely correct. case of boot from cd (say) and pup_save
# is usb flash, will save every 5 minutes which is wrong.
# for now, have commented-out line, leave at 30 minutes always.

That answers my above question about the life expectancy of a flash card written to every 5 minutes...

However, at the moment I am running 2.16 from a live-cd, saving to a usb-key. Puppy auto-saves to the stick every 5 minutes. I'll see if I can find where to change the parameter in /usr/sbin/savepuppyd.

[Pizzasgood]

Code: Select all

SLEEPTIME=300 #save every 30 minutes. 

Change that line. That number is in tenths of a minute from what I can tell.

[adric22]

I've been running two puppy computers from 1 GB compact flash cards. So far, so good. Also keep in mind that different media has different numbers of read/write capabilities. My biggest problem is speed and lack of DMA on the brand of cards I've bought, but I got the cheapest of the cheap.

[Fanless_Puppy_Fan]

Thanks for the write-up, Bert. This is my first post, but your how-to convinced me to build a dedicated Puppy Box. I've been testing the frugal install on an old PC and pretty much have it down pat. It works very nicely on a PIII-500 w/ 500 MB RAM and a 250MB HD. Why 250MB? This is my list of major components for the project:

Epia mini-ITX ML5000 MB
http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/mainb ... ard_id=301

picoPSU-80
http://www.mini-box.com/picoPSU-80

Apacer ADMII 256MB DOM DiskOnModule IDE Flash Drive
http://www.jetway-mini-itx.com/40admiiwilop.html

Kingston 512MB Value Ram DDR266

I expect to put it in a Home Made Plexiglass enclosure like John's little Mini from the Damn Small Site:
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/mini.html

Anyway, my MB gets here in a couple of days and I have a few questions/comments.

I want to run entirely from RAM via Frugal install so I probably should have bought a bigger IDE Flash Disk. I'm running no swap so I think the IDE Flash should match the RAM, but I'm wondering if EXT2 is the best file system and how large the save file will end up being. Perhaps the save file requires much less space than the RAM?

EDIT 6/25/07 ANSWER: ext2 is the best so you can use grub. the save file is really not that big if you don't add programs or make a ton of huge documents.

I originally thought to save the user settings and documents on a USB thumb drive when the 250MB ran out. Is there a way to just move the save file from the IDE flash to a USB and it will be auto-detected on boot? Maybe I'll try this and report back.

EDIT 6/25/07 ANSWER: If you no save file on HD and you have one on USB it offers a choice between none and USB on boot.

Does the frugal install to HD still save the session every 5 or 30 minutes like the install to CF? Or is it only on shut down?

I think if I like the results, I may just buy a 1gb ram and IDE Flash Drive, but I have a little experimentation left before I'm going to buy those expensive components.

EDIT 6/25/07 ANSWER: I found a good deal on 1GB IDE Flash Drives that are about twice as fast as the Apacer. I'm going to use a 1 GB IDE Flash HD w/ furgal and call it good.

All comments/suggestions/criticisms are welcome. I've been playing with this distro since before 1.0, but I've never had the time to really work with it. My hopes are to build a tiny, silent internet/productivity PC like webTV but better than a Windows PC. I considered doing this with DSL, but found they are not really ready for prime time over there. I think Puppy 2.16 is.

It just works! That's a beautiful thing! If more linux developers learned by Puppy's example, Windows PC's would be in the minority.

Thank you all (especially BK) for all the good hard work.

[Aard88]

Components

Logic Supply: www.logicsupply.com

Intel D201GLY Mainboard 1.33 GHz Celeron 2xx processor; has PCI, VGA, Parallel port, and 6 USB 2.0 support. $77.00

http://www.logicsupply.com/products/d201gly

Pentium 4 Power connector $7.00

http://www.logicsupply.com/products/p4_powercab

Total with shipping ($10.98) $94.98

Newegg: www.newegg.com

iGoLogic Model iPMKIT-60 Mini-ITX DC-DC Power Board with 60Watt AC Adapter $56.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813995001

Crucial 256MB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) $17.49

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820146518

StarTech 2-Outlet USB Plate For PC Motherboards Model USBPLATE $12.99
(used to connect to the motherboard and allow the USB memory to be inside the box the cables are disconnected from the plate)

Total with shipping (8.73) $96.20

Misc. Parts

2 USB key drives: One is formatted as a Linux swap partition 1gb the other has the OS on it Linux Puppy 2.16 SeaMonkey Full Drivers 2gb Both are Kingston Travelers. $40.00
LED Light: (salvage)
SPNO switches: Radio Shack $2.00
Box: Big Lots $10.00

Total Build cost: $243.18

[slvrldy17]

After playing with various versions of Puppy since the 1.0 series I'm finally ready to try building a dedicated to Puppy computer. Since my brother picked up an Intel D201GLY Little Valley main board via a swap that will likely be the basis for it. For specifications on the board check the link below

http://www.logicsupply.com/products/d201gly

I have a question about this board that I hope someone here will be able to advise me on -

The board has only one IDE connector on it - headers for SATA are there but no connections. Will there be any likely problems in Puppy 3.01 having both the hard drive and an optical drive on the same cable? Anyone tried this? Any pitfalls to watch out for?

Since power supplies alone for Mini ITX systems run $50 to 60 my inclination is to use a Morex 2766 case from Logic Supply and save the trouble of building a case and rigging the power supply inside of it. It will also accommodate a 3.5" hard drive of which there are several spares sitting around here. I'm considering going the extra expense of the 80 Watt power brick though - standard is a 60 watt - I've had problems in the past with underpowered PSU's. Anyone with thoughts on or experience with the power requirements for a system with a 3.5" HD and a slim (notebook) optical drive feel free to reply. FYI the Little Valley main board draws 27 watts I'm told. Link to specs on case below

http://www.logicsupply.com/products/2766

Anyone care to recommend a slim optical drive? I'm open to suggestions but the capability to burn both CD's and DVD's is a priority.

Thats about it for now - RAM is another on hand item - a 1GB stick of DDR2 533/400 Crucial value RAM so no problem there. When/if this box gets put together I'll post a picture or two of the result.

Thanks to Bert for the Inspiration to try this,

Alice

[headfound]

Hard drive and optical on same cable is fine. The only drawback is that you can lose a bit of speed from the optical drive because both drives have to send data along the same path.
I think one website tested the mboard with a two drives and it only took around 40 odd watts.

[Bert]

Hi Alice,

In case you prefer a silent, fanless mainboard, this could be interesting:

http://www.minipc.de/catalog/il/844

Good luck!
Bert