www.ipcop-forum.de

I'm not sure how many here actually use Raqcop anymore but if you do, you noticed that you cannot reach it any longer. The domain expired in October and I have not gotten any response from Brian who has owned the domain since 2007 and gave me free run of it since he is self employed and has had to work impossible hours to stay in business during a soft economy. These days, I can only assume the man is still among the living as I have not been successful in getting a reply from him by either voicemail or email.

I am not allowed to transfer the domain since it only recently expired.

As far as Cobalt x86 hardware goes, I have not fully been able to port the Cobalt patch to the newer kernels as so much has changed but I am close now if it is in fact worth it. My test builds as of yet run the latest IPCop kernel but without the Cobalt patch, only the e100 checksum patch. It runs fine but does not have the Cobalt section of System Info since there are no /proc/cobalt entries without the Cobalt patch (originally from the 2.4 kernel but ported to 2.6 by Jeff Walter originally) and the 3000 series hang on reboot needing one to toggle the power switch, otherwise boots and runs fine off of the unpatched but custom configured Cobalt kernel. My 550 is still running the last stable version from a few years ago so I have not tested it with the more virgin kernel of my test builds. Recent kernels allow one to embed a custom command line in the kernel. Since the unpatched kernel cannot see the command line that the Cobalt Rom sends, I simply embedded the command line in the kernel to activate the serial console so you can watch it boot via console as always.

A few years ago I ended up with some Symantec Appliances that feature Celeron 4 and DDR ram so I made a custom version of IPCop that also has the graph mods of Raqcop meaning there are hourly graphs as well as a link quality graph which I merely adapted from Allan Kissack's mods so he designed them and gets credit. The boot loader also sets up the serial console right out of the gate at 115k. The only kernel mod I have done at all is adding pae support as I want to see if the newer Intel processors with gobs of ram will work in 32 bit with pae. So far as I know, the newer 64 bit intels support pae. One of my i5 processor boxes has 16GB of ram. Visualize a flash install with 8GB or more of ram and a box that seldom gets rebooted and all that proxy cache in /ram rather than a physical disk. The other obvious option is to port IPCop to 64 bit but I'm sure it is not a trivial undertaking.

As far as the previous adaptation, it needs a name other than Symcop as I intend it to be used anywhere a serial console is desired and PAE support. I will use powerful fanless heatsinked platforms in the near future as it is now feasible to have a quiet computer room.

For those who have not run recent SVN IPCop builds, the Webkit rendering problem is gone now. I am not sure if updating cgi did it or if someone quietly fixed it. I can't see any other change in the diffs that should do it. I've tested it on Chrome, the new Opera browsers based on Chromium, Qupzilla etc, all Webkit engined browsers.

I am contemplating coming up with another domain and continuing what I have been doing the last 9 years. Just thought someone would like to know that I did not just disappear with no explanation. I did backup the entire Raqcop website to tarball since I still have sftp privileges to the hosting machine itself and the raqcop folder in the /home directory via Brian's Techninjaz domain.

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Cobalt Raq550 running Raqcop (IPCop for Cobalts) 2.1.9
Pentium III 1.26ghz 1GB ram
16x2 White Oled Display
2 UDMA CF to IDE adapters Raid1.
2 Transcend Ind Grade CF cards 512MB.
Actiontec GT701 ADSL Modem in Bridge Mode.

Dear Dave , raqcop is still active on our cobalts.In fact my disk just crashed and i need a copy of the win images .Do you by any chance uploaded the images to any server?I still have the kernel images that i used to update manually but i am missing the installation images.Your effort has to revive as there is the only way to keep a raqcop active and the raqs were built to run for a bery big period of time.Also the forum used to be a great source of knowledge.You have to include the forum as well.
thank you .

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Qube3
600mhz k6-3+ APZ 450mhz 1,7v
2 x 512mb ram
CF Sandisk Extreme III 4gb
1gb SATA Seagate HD
Upgraded extrenal SFX power supply.

Dave.
Ive been using cobalts for many years, and I have really appreciated your (and others) exceptional efforts in providing patches and guides for installations etc.

I would be interested in any revisions beyond 2.6.39.1 (the latest I managed to get and compile) should you make them available on some new domain.

Cheers

hello there, it happens and i have saved a copy from Daves Kernels up to 3.1 but i lack the raqcop images.We will wait for Dave to give an answear and if needed i will gladly send you the images.pm me an email in.

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Qube3
600mhz k6-3+ APZ 450mhz 1,7v
2 x 512mb ram
CF Sandisk Extreme III 4gb
1gb SATA Seagate HD
Upgraded extrenal SFX power supply.

I still have them. I'll have to think on where to upload them. I would imagine you would want the 2.1.8 image along with the 2.1.9 update? You will have to manually update via browser upload as the built in mechanism points to an inactive domain. I was making some headway on the 3.10 kernel as far as the patch goes.

It's too bad that previous efforts to get a kernel sponsor for the real Cobalt drivers was largely ignored. Still, the Qube 3, Raq3 and Raq4 and likely the XTR will boot and run the 3.10 unpatched kernel (except for the e100 checksum patch) quite well. I have not been able to get the 550 to boot from the unpatched kernel but I need to look into this. Any Cobalt should be able to at least boot a gzipped or bzipped elf binary kernel as long as the ide controller and filesystem modules are built into the kernel and the rom can find at least a boot partition with ext3 containing said zipped image. There exists an XFS version of the roms as well but it is not worth redesigning IPCop just to run XFS.

I'm keeping my eye on F2FS for flash devices though and the possibility as to whether this would ever make sense for IPCop in the future, I've had no problems with it running the OS itself on SSD drives on my Mythtv Box or my Intel Xeon socket 1155. I use few spinning platters these days except for a 8 disk ZFS raidz2 pool on said xeon server only for storage and NFS share and a four disk ZFS raidz1 pool on my Mythtv box for storing recordings. The OS runs on SSD mirrored raid on SSD drives. Two m.2 sticks for the OS on my file server, eight 2.5" 2TiB spinning drives in trayless hot swap bays. The ZFS is to prevent bit rot. BTRFS does not handle raid 5 and 6 well yet, in both cases you do not use hardware raid or MDADM since they have their own built in and are in tune with what the hardware is doing. I love ZFS regardless of license.

_________________
Cobalt Raq550 running Raqcop (IPCop for Cobalts) 2.1.9
Pentium III 1.26ghz 1GB ram
16x2 White Oled Display
2 UDMA CF to IDE adapters Raid1.
2 Transcend Ind Grade CF cards 512MB.
Actiontec GT701 ADSL Modem in Bridge Mode.

I got up to 3.4 on Debian and Raqcop no problem. The kernel has changed immensely since 3.4 though and it has taken a lot of work so far to the point of where I have gotten.

_________________
Cobalt Raq550 running Raqcop (IPCop for Cobalts) 2.1.9
Pentium III 1.26ghz 1GB ram
16x2 White Oled Display
2 UDMA CF to IDE adapters Raid1.
2 Transcend Ind Grade CF cards 512MB.
Actiontec GT701 ADSL Modem in Bridge Mode.

Dear Dave , we have all to admit that the cobalt systems are unique and fascinating and a mojrety of people will always get back to this closed technology myth.Your work has provided us with a good solution for everyday home firewall setup and your kernel has given the opportunity to use the cobalts as a NAS system with gigabit support and real 30mb/sec read transfers and 1tb+ support.This more than i need for my home use of a NAS system.Retro community is now the new old interest and people will always step on your work.So i guess it would be a big deal to publish once again your work somewhere on the internet and of possible the forum section of the raqcop domain.The cf images are the most needed.A lot of knowledge has been given through your forum.Maybe ipcop could give some webspace for future preserve.

_________________
Qube3
600mhz k6-3+ APZ 450mhz 1,7v
2 x 512mb ram
CF Sandisk Extreme III 4gb
1gb SATA Seagate HD
Upgraded extrenal SFX power supply.