To get a system to reboot upon a panic put this into arbiext if running
an ArbiCD version or in some other startup file if you are using the GPL:

echo 10 >/proc/sys/kernel/panic

Some explanation on this:
kernel/panic - The integer value is the number of seconds the system
will wait before automatic reboot in case of system panic. A value of 0
means ``disabled''. Automatic reboot is an interesting feature to turn
on for unattended systems. The command-line option panic=value can be
used to set this parameter at boot time.

Arbitrator machines should not be panic'ing when the hardware and
software are correctly installed. We suggest you just use this as a
temporary fix until you find out if changing something in your hardware
configuration or in your kernel building is necessary to correct it.

Linux Bandwidth Arbitrator - Tips & Tricks provided by Rajiv Shah

Hardware requirements

I am using a Pentium 133 MMX with 32MB RAM to manage the bandwidth on a network with 5 hosts and a 32kbps connection to the internet. However, due to the low RAM. I have to clear out my log file and /tmp directory on a daily basis.

I would recommend a minimum of 3 network cards – two for the bridge and one for remote access to the arbitrator.

Remote Access

My arbitrator sits on the connection to the internet and I have to be frugal with my limited pool of public ip addresses. I also do not want any form of access to the arbitrator from the internet or from other hosts on my internal network. I have therefore added a third NIC to the arbitrator and used a cross-over cable to connect it to a second NIC in my desktop.

1. assign an ip to the third NIC:

ifconfig eth2 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx netmask xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx up

2. create a password for user root using the passwd command at the console

3. type “/etc/init.d/sshd start” at the console to start the ssh daemon

I am now able to connect to the arbitrator from the comfort of my desk

Persistence:

Copy /etc/passwd to /home/root/floppy

Copy /etc/ssh_* to /home/root/floppy

Add the following lines to arbiext:

ifconfig eth2 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx netmask xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx up
cp /home/root/floppy/passwd /etc
cp /home/root/floppy/ssh_* /etc
chmod 600 /etc/ssh_*
/etc/init.d/sshd start

Starting the GUI

4. assign an ip to the arbitrator – see step 1 in the section on remote access

5. type in the following commands at the command prompt:

mkdir /var/www
cd /var/www
tar zxfv /art/webgui.tar.gz
cp etc/thttpd.conf /etc
/etc/init.d/thttpd start

6. browse to http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/arbi where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is the ip address you assigned to your arbitrator.

Persistence:

Add the commands in step 2 to arbiext

Formatting a floppy and getting away from 8.3 filenames

Provided by stevew

You can format a floppy in what you would call drive A in Linux to get away from the DOS 8.3 filename limitation by doing the following:

7. if you already have a floppy in the drive and are using one of the Arbitrator CD's then you will need to first copy all the files you want to keep to a temporary location:

mkdir /home/root/ftemp
cp /home/root/floppy/* /home/root/ftemp

and then un-mount the floppy with:

umount /home/root/floppy

8. with a floppy in the drive type:

mke2fs /dev/fd0

when it gets done and says so, you have a Linux floppy without the 8.3 limitations that the DOS format had

9. to mount it again for use with ArbiCD type:

mount /dev/fd0 /home/root/floppy

and copy your files back by typing:

cp /home/root/ftemp/* /home/root/floppy

10. you might want to name those 8.3's back to the original names. Renaming files is done with mv. For example:

mv arbdefau.con arbdefault.conf

Floppy Booting the CD Distro

Provided by trellis

If you have an older machine whose BIOS does not support booting from CD, it's very simple to create a floppy disk with which you can boot into the Arbitrator CD.

grab a copy of Bart's Boot Image Extractor from http://www.nu2.nu/bbie/

run BBIE on the Arbitrator CD (or the ISO image), and you'll get a bootable floppy disk image.

use a utility such as WinImage or Rawrite to write this image onto a floppy disk.

insert the floppy and the CD into the target machine and boot as normal

My comments:

The floppy produced above will result in a DOS formatted floppy which will suffer from 8.3 filename limitations. Following Steve’s tip above to reformat the floppy using Linux will render the floppy unbootable.

Transferring files to/from Arbitrator

If you have a computer running Windows 2000 or XP the easiest way to transfer files to/from the Arbitrator is to:

11. create a shared directory on the Windows machine with the access permissions you want to apply (for simplicity I made my shared directory accessible to everybody)

12. type the following at the command prompt on the arbitrator:

mkdir /home/shared
smbmount //xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/winshare /home/shared –o guest rw

where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is the ip of your Windows machine and winshare is the share name of the shared folder

13. any files in the /home/shared/folder are now actually stored on your Windows machine but are accessible by both machines

Persistence:

Add the commands in step 2 to arbiext

If your are using Linux, the above will work if you are already using Samba to share files with other Windows machines or you could use NFS.

Using MRTG to plot data from Advanced Reporting Tools

Using MRTG to plot Arbitrator traffic data is made a lot easier by first implementing a file transfer system as described above. Being able to write output from the shipped reporting tools directly to a shared directory simplifies matters greatly.

I have added the following line to my hostlist.report to monitor the amount of all http traffic passing through the Arbitrator:

xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/xx HTTP /home/shared/traffic/http

I am running MRTG on Linux and my cfg file looks like:

### Global Config Options

WorkDir: /var/www/html/mrtg/arbi

Options[_]: nopercent,growright,nobanner,noinfo,absolute,bits

#Report on all http traffic

Target[http]: `tail –n 2 /home/shared/traffic/http`

MaxBytes[http]: 1250000

Title[http]: ARBI http traffic

PageTop[http]:

ARBI http traffic