[asterisk-users] New Tutorial: Asterisk on EPIA VIA C3

[Tzafrir Cohen]

On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 09:11:00AM +0100, Alan Lord wrote:
> Darrick Hartman (lists) wrote:
> <snip />
> >>
> >> I didn't find it too much trouble in a Via C700N system. But I wouldn't 
> >> use one of the mainstream distros for the OS. They chew up system 
> >> resources just trying to accommodate "any" hardware.
> >>
> >> The solution is to roll-your-own. See this series of articles on my 
> >> blog... http://www.theopensourcerer.com/tag/asterisk/
> > 
> > The C7 supports full i686 features.  The C3 is an older chip that is 
> > fully i586 and partially i686 compatible.  If you have a distribution 
> > that is compiled with i586 optimizations, you won't have problems.
> > 
> > Darrick
> 
> Yeah, hi Darrick. I sort of realised after my post what the issue was 
> with the C3. Although my point about not using a regular distro still 
> stands. If you roll your own, all the "features" of the host hardware 
> can be used - perhaps more importantly, *only* those features - and your 
> kernel and compiler appropriately optimised.
> 
> Regular distros are great (I use Ubuntu on my desktop pc) but they do 
> have to try and be all things to all men and suck up cycles and ram like 
> the latest Dyson ;-) But for a low power 24/7 server that I won't be 
> "playing" much with; a custom build is just fine.

You can easily take a standard distro and remove all the services you
don't really need.

> 
> Consider that I have running concurrently on my little C7 with 1G of RAM 
> (That I have *down-clocked* to 1Ghz):

One major point: one of the cool advantages of the VIA CPUs is that it
can be run fanless. In your setup you couple it with a large HD, and
hence your system has moving parts.

> 
> * Asterisk,
> * Samba,
> * Java/Tomcat:
> 	*Cosmo Calendar Server
> 	*ConcursiveSuiteCRM
> 	*Alfresco
> 	*OpenBravo
> * PostgreSQL,
> * MySQL,
> * Exim,
> * Apache,
> * Vtiger, SugarCRM, A few Joomla! instances,
> * Subversion Server
> * sshd,
> * ntpd,

Now, why would you run all of those things on the same system?

Asterisk needs a responsive system. It will not play along well if you
add heavy-duty file serving to the system, as the system will spend too
much time serving files (in kernel space).

There's a limit to what you can optimize away with real-time kernel
features. 

Oh, and practically all of those can be installed as standard Debian
packages, without a need for such a lengthy installation manual. I bet
that in 1/2 a year after you install it, you'll end up with a system
with quite a few known security holes. But you'll never bother fixing
them.

Xandros is one such vendor that never bothered following up on security
fixes. Hence the eeepc was an easy target for exploiters. Need I say
that I will not advise anyone to use software from Xandros?

-- 
               Tzafrir Cohen
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