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Create two Linux partitions (type 83), one for /boot and the other one for the rest of the OS. Try to use GPT (cgdisk instead of fdisk) in order to later on use the UUID trick on the bootloader. For /boot, 200 or 300MB should be enough. Remember to format /boot as ext2 and the other partition as ext3/4. Once you're all set, download ALARM's tar.gz file. Extract the OS tar.gz (tar zxfv) to the ext3/4 partition. Then move the /boot from the ext3/4 partition to the ext2 partition. Now, edit fstab file on the ext3/4 partition and while leaving the existing lines, add these lines: /dev/sda1   /boot        ext2    defaults,noatime     1 2 /dev/sda2   /            ext4    noatime              0 1 That should be it. Unmount everything, plug the drive into ...

I don't like hot CPU's so when I install Linux I usually setup and install cpupower on it. It's dead easy. Check this: pacman -S cpupower cat /etc/systemd/system/cpuscaling.service [Unit] Description=change cpu governor [Service] User=root Type=oneshot ExecStart=/usr/bin/cpupower frequency-set -g ondemand [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target systemctl enable cpuscaling.service systemctl start cpuscaling.service And this is what you should see after starting the service/rebooting: systemctl status cpuscaling.service * cpuscaling.service - Change CPU Governor Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/cpuscaling.service; enabled) Active: inactive (dead) since Tue 2014-08-19 06:07:54 UTC; 40s ago Process: 2250 ExecStart=/usr/bin/cpupower frequency-set -g ondemand (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS) Main PID: 2250 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS) Aug 19 06:07:54 alarm cpupower[2250]: Setting cpu: 0 Aug 19 06:07:54 alarm systemd[1]: Started Change CPU Govern...

My Headless home server (Seagate Dockstar) doesn't have a standard boot manager. It simply boots a uBoot image, either from it's NAND or from an external HDD. All this is set up in it's BIOS. Unfortunately it doesn't have a iLO/DRAC/SIMC/IPMI so that I can control the BIOS over a network connection. Anyway, this amazingly cheap/"low power" device comes with a crippled OS and I like ArchLinux ARM a lot better. Since ALARM (short for ArchLinux ARM) doesn't fit in the small NAND I have to setup the BIOS to point it to an external USB device. But there's a downside to this. Since the PlugPC has 4 USB ports and since the HDD's don't always take the same amount of time handshaking with the BIOS on boot-up, what happens is that sometimes disk A is sda and disk B is sdb but some other times disk A is sdb and disk B is sda. Rather confusing...for us and for the small server too. And worst of all, when the change happens the device won't boot u...

Every time I install a PlugComputer I setup a Dynamic DNS service so that I can access it's shell and apps/services from the Internet easily. My preferred Dynamic DNS service is FreeDNS which is very easy to install and setup. Plus, it's working on FreeBSD servers :-P Setting up an account at FreeDNS is fairly simple and it is also simple to setup a subdomain in the form of an A NAME with them. A subdomain is basically something that looks like aname.domain.com . Whatever! So after setting up your A NAME, you need to configure the headless server so that it frequently checks your public IP address. If it has changed from the last time it checked, it then has to register the new public IP address with your A NAME. Most Dynamic DNS services make this easy for us in the form of a URL that we can visit. And since the headless server doesn't run a proper web browser we can use WGET. Frequent checks are configured in the form of a script that is run every, say, 5 minutes. ...