Graham White: My Notes

I've been meaning to log some, I think I'll call it... Linux type stuff, to do with the TinyTuxbox for a while. Here's my attempt to look at what Ubuntu makes of this little box.

First, the CPU (from /proc/cpuinfo):

processor : 0
vendor_id : CentaurHauls
cpu family : 6
model : 13
model name : VIA Eden Processor 500MHz
stepping : 0
cpu MHz : 498.706
cache size : 128 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 1
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge cmov pat clflush acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 tm nx up pni est tm2 xtpr rng rng_en ace ace_en ace2 ace2_en phe phe_en pmm pmm_en
bogomips : 998.77
clflush size : 64

The interestingness here comes from the fact we have a 500MHz Via Eden with 128k cache and just under 1000 bogomips which (although it shouldn't be) is often used as a trivial performance metric of a processor. Next, lets have a look at what's on the PCI bus (courtesy of lspci):

00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. CX700 Host Bridge (rev 03)
00:00.1 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. CX700 Host Bridge
00:00.2 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. CX700 Host Bridge
00:00.3 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. CX700 Host Bridge
00:00.4 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. CX700 Host Bridge
00:00.7 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. CX700 Host Bridge
00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 PCI Bridge
00:08.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
00:0f.0 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. CX700M2 IDE
00:10.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 90)
00:10.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 90)
00:10.4 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 90)
00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. CX700 PCI to ISA Bridge
00:11.7 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. CX700 Internal Module Bus
00:13.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. CX700 Host Bridge
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. CX700M2 UniChrome PRO II Graphics (rev 03)
02:01.0 Audio device: VIA Technologies, Inc. VIA High Definition Audio Controller (rev 10)

Highlights here come from the Realtek Ethernet which is well catered for out of the box by pretty much any major Linux these days. There are also two IDE controllers, USB controllers and an audio controller that are all well supported. It's interesting that most of the PCI devices are provided by the single CX700M2 chipset which I believe is built onto the processor board for the Via Eden's. The one thing from this list that has been a pain in the back side is the graphics controller. It works out of the box both in frame buffer mode and via the open source via unichrome driver called Openchrome. However, Openchrome don't support the CX700M2 board yet (not officially anyway, the code is still in SVN according to the guys I spoke to on their IRC channel) so graphics processing was eating lots of CPU. Fortunately, I found a link to later via drivers at linux.via.com.tw than are available through the official Via driver site where they're still only supporting Ubuntu 7.04 and 7.10. Seems I'm caught in the middle for now, the Via drivers work nicely but will be a pain to maintain until the Openchrome drivers find their way into Ubuntu and I switch back over to them.

Then there's the memory. For a small box this one has a relatively generous helping of 512MB RAM, some of which is stolen by the CX700M2 for graphical shared memory. Free is currently showing 439MB total memory, 390MB used and 49MB available; swap is 100% free. That's not bad at all considering I'm running Xorg with Gnome, SSH, SqueezeCenter, 2 instances of MySQL (SqueezeCenter starts its own instance), and a Nanobroker with some Perl code to log my Current Cost data. It'll be running Apache soon too as I move towards writing some more web based Current Cost facilities.

Just in case anyone is interested, here's the list of modules currently loaded into Ubuntu's 2.6.24-19-generic kernel: drm af_packet ipv6 cpufreq_powersave cpufreq_conservative cpufreq_ondemand cpufreq_stats freq_table cpufreq_userspace sbs container sbshc video output dock battery iptable_filter ip_tables x_tables ac parport_pc lp parport loop snd_hda_intel snd_pcm_oss snd_mixer_oss snd_pcm snd_page_alloc snd_hwdep snd_seq_dummy snd_seq_oss snd_seq_midi snd_rawmidi snd_seq_midi_event snd_seq snd_timer snd_seq_device snd soundcore serio_raw evdev psmouse pl2303 usbserial pcspkr button i2c_viapro i2c_core shpchp pci_hotplug via_agp agpgart ext3 jbd mbcache sg sd_mod pata_acpi pata_via ata_generic 8139cp ehci_hcd uhci_hcd libata usbcore 8139too mii scsi_mod thermal processor fan fbcon tileblit font bitblit softcursor fuse

I'll spare the full dmidecode output but from this information I can determine it has an AMI Bios version 8.14 released on 03/28/2008. The CPU is listed with, amusingly, Family "out of spec" and 128K L1 parity cache and 128K L2 ECC cache. A single soldered 512MB Dimm.

I'm still surprised at just how well it matches up to being a standard x86 box, providing all the interfaces you would expect of such a box given its size. Clearly it's never going to be the fastest or have the most memory, but it really does stack up nicely for all but the most intense home serving tasks or gaming. It certainly shows me we can fill most of our computing needs with such a small box and only 8 watts of power. Ubuntu seems no problem for it and it's reported to run Windows XP too. I'll definitely be bearing it in mind next time someone asks me to recommend a box simply for browsing the web, e-mail or a bit of word processing!

<Edit>
Memtest86+ shows the processor as a Via C3 Samuel 2 clocked at 498.7MHz, 128K L1 cache @ 2035MB/s, it doesn't detect L2 cache, and shows 447MB RAM @ 367MB/s.
</Edit>

With my new toy now in hand the time soon came to get it installed with Linux. At first glance it might appear to be tricky to install given the lack of CD or Floppy drives. However, it boots from just about anything you attach to it whether that's USB, Compact Flash or Network Boot. Setting up a one-time PXE server seemed a little over the top so I was planning to boot from a USB stick until I found someone at work with a USB CDROM.

Usually I like to run Fedora at home, it's the thing I'm most comfortable with having spent my career tinkering with Red Hat and SUSE based distributions so one of the things I wanted to do with this box was install the much hyped Ubuntu distribution. This wasn't to see what all the fuss is about (I'm familiar with Ubuntu having tried it a couple of times before but always gone back to Fedora) but really just so I can get to know it even better. This machine is going to be part desktop and part server so Ubuntu kind of makes sense too.

I installed the hard disk into the box myself and once I got over some initial hardware niggles (that I caused I should add) the installation was simple. Boot from USB CDROM with the Hardy Heron CD in it and the rest is history. It's amazing how such a small box can run a full whack desktop operating system and do all that on just 8 watts.

In these early days, I have three things in mind for the box. The primary use will be to serve my music collection to my stereo; next is to connect my current cost meter to allow some more in-depth analysis of our power usage at home; then there's simply using it as a desktop for the simpler day-to-day computer usage i.e. browsing the web.

Setting up the music streaming was pretty easy after transferring my collection to the hard disk. I added the apt sources for the SqueezeCenter software that operates with my SqueezeBox Duet, did an apt-get update and an apt-get install squeezecenter and job done. The TinyTuxbox can much better cope with running the MySQL server this is based on along with the web front end and the music collection scanning services associated with the software than the SLUG I tried previously. All in all, couldn't have been much easier.

I've not tried hooking up my current cost meter yet, ironically I've run out of power sockets near the computer with only a six-way adapter and plugs for the PC, TinyTuxbox, Printer, Monitor, ADSL Modem Router, and speakers although it shouldn't be a hard problem to rectify.

Last of all, one of the additional benefits of this low-power box is every day usage. It can easily run a web browser so instead of starting up a large PC just for this, we can switch to the TinyTuxbox desktop and browse there. This should add to our power saving, even though it's likely the TinyTuxbox will be run all the time soon to serve the current cost data. That reminds me, I really should discuss batch-uploading of current cost data so I can save even the 8 watts the TinyTuxbox uses most of the time too.

My second choice of home media server arrived on my doorstep last week after my unwillingness to maintain the painfully slow and awkward slug. This time around I've plumped for a TinyTuxbox Series 8 which seems to be a UK resold version of the e-Box 4300. It fits the extra requirements I made after parting with the SLUG, that is it's an x86 based machine and has lots more memory. I'm not the only one at work with one of these types of boxes either, James Taylor has the Netvoyager re-badged version of the previous box to my one, the e-Box 2300.

It is, in fact, a fully functional x86 PC but just a really small one, even smaller than the pretty tiny Fit-PC which I was also seriously considering and probably would have gone for were it not for the excellent pre-sales support of one of the TinyTuxbox staff over e-mail. That said, the excellent pre-sales was balanced with painfully slow delivery. It took 28 days to get it to my door which for a delivery cost of nearly £20 I consider poor. I've been left with a upward feeling though, post-sales support has been promising too as I initially had some problems installing the box, which it turned out were my fault and I solved quickly enough anyway. I'm not going to talk software here though, that's a story for another day. So how does my TinyTuxbox look and spec up....?

The workhorse of the TinyTuxbox is the 500MHz Via Eden ULV processor which provides a 32-bit x86 processor along with a built-in graphics processor with hardware MPEG decoding. The processor is an impressive bit of kit, it runs all that from just 1 watt of power, see the link for the full specs! Away from the processor we have 512MB RAM (some of which is shared for the video output), on-board Ethernet, 3 USB ports, VGA output, a PS/2 connector (supplied with PS/2 Y-Splitter cable to connect both keyboard and mouse), a compact flash slot, sound in and out, power button, and hard disk and power LEDs. The box is also fitted with an IDE connector and can house a 2½" laptop type hard disk in it. I ordered it without the hard disk and fitted my own as the supplied ones were not good value for money probably due to the services incurred from the fitting itself.

The TinyTuxbox site advertises the unit as consuming a maximum of 8 watts and I'm pleased to report that was absolutely accurate. According to my current cost meter, it uses 8 watts with the hard disk spinning so once I get it to spin down on idle it should use very little juice. Click the various images for a link to my Flickr page and some more notes.