benjojo.co.uk

benjojo posted 13 Jul 2026 11:31 +0000

Man I forgot how much magic I did in 2022 for EMF-IX, and then didnt write any of it down.

Finally got the EMF-IX machines booted and they are:

A) Home made cloud init metadata server
B) PXE boot
C) the rootfs is on ATAoverEthernet, and to be fair that's very cool but also looks totally insane on lsblk

If you ever see this outside of EMF-IX, run

# lsblk
NAME                  MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
etherd/e0.0           152:0    0    5G  0 disk 
├─etherd/e0.0p1       152:1    0  512M  0 part 
├─etherd/e0.0p2       152:2    0  488M  0 part 
└─etherd/e0.0p3       152:3    0    4G  0 part 
  ├─debian--vg-root   254:0    0  3.1G  0 lvm  /
  └─debian--vg-swap_1 254:1    0  976M  0 lvm  [SWAP]

implr@social.hackers.. replied 13 Jul 2026 11:40 +0000
in reply to: https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/1Zh13GYlcvqdQpws85

@benjojo why ATAoE instead of eg. iscsi or even nfs? More cursed more better?

benjojo replied 13 Jul 2026 11:42 +0000
in reply to: https://social.hackerspace.pl/users/implr/statuses/116912476972689137

@implr My thinking was that it's basically impossible to iptables's yourself out of storage with ATAoE, unlike NFS/iSCSI

implr@social.hackers.. replied 13 Jul 2026 11:50 +0000
in reply to: https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/35XR41P62H96rQ4119

@benjojo oh it's a whole other ethertype? lmao that's ridiculous but also totally makes sense in your case

benjojo replied 13 Jul 2026 12:02 +0000
in reply to: https://social.hackerspace.pl/users/implr/statuses/116912518151715759

@implr yeah it's wimsy

linus@schreibt.jetzt replied 13 Jul 2026 15:06 +0000
in reply to: https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/1Zh13GYlcvqdQpws85

@benjojo looks fun! Why do you have the layering of partitions and LVM, rather than exposing a rootfs and swap each as one vblade? I'd expect things like a boot partition or ESP not to make much sense in this sort of setup.

benjojo replied 13 Jul 2026 16:29 +0000
in reply to: https://schreibt.jetzt/users/linus/statuses/116913285829292850

@linus 2022 Ben probably started this setup in qemu as a "normal" debian box that then got turned into a ATAoE setup, because it was easier that way, so there is a weird LVM etc thing going on because of that

benjojo replied 13 Jul 2026 11:32 +0000
in reply to: https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/1Zh13GYlcvqdQpws85

But it's remarkable how much good storage makes a difference to how usable a system "feels", These Wyse's are tiny Intel N2807's with 2GB of DDR3, yet with fast low latency storage they feel totally fine, I've used AWS EC2's that felt worse than this

advancedrubbish@hach.. replied 13 Jul 2026 11:38 +0000
in reply to: https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/QhWs6rm2hq78nN6tzj

@benjojo this is Apple’s whole thing lately :)

holsta@mastodon.art replied 13 Jul 2026 11:47 +0000
in reply to: https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/QhWs6rm2hq78nN6tzj

@benjojo Sure, PCIe gen 5 SSDs are nice now, but if 2005 just had reasonably priced SATA SSDs that could saturate the bus, that could have been great.

kestral@masto.hacker.. replied 13 Jul 2026 11:51 +0000
in reply to: https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/QhWs6rm2hq78nN6tzj

@benjojo similarly putting an SSD in my G4 iMac makes it feel faster than some modern Windows systems.

kestral@masto.hacker.. replied 13 Jul 2026 11:51 +0000
in reply to: https://masto.hackers.town/users/kestral/statuses/116912520486293903

@benjojo mind you, trying to get treacle to flow uphill also feels faster than some modern Windows systems.

sebastian@schottkydi.. replied 13 Jul 2026 11:39 +0000
in reply to: https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/1Zh13GYlcvqdQpws85

@benjojo Haven't heard ATAOverEthernet in a long while. I don't think I've ever seen it used anywhere.