New Build 5/24/08

[Davesworld]

I uploaded a build with a more useful LCD display. It boots up to a bandwidth meter but along the way, services starting are shown on the lcd as it boots. The one area that you will maybe want to edit is the actual perl lcd program that does this. It's in /usr/local/sbin/lcd and lines 72 through 75 allow you to set the device you want to monitor as well as the upload and download speeds of your connection. I set it up for eth0 and 100mbs up and down for distribution. For myself, I use the red device and the maximum isp up and down speeds. You will want this for the bars to be useful. For example, if you have an internet connection that maxes out at 3mbs, you don't want the value to be set for 100mbs or the bar will barely move. You will still get a numerical value in KBs to the right. If you are using a recent build, you can simply take the lcd perl file and rc.sysinit and overwrite the existing ones with the new. If you're using a build from last December to a month or so ago, you may want to do another install since I dropped Cobalt's lcd driver from the kernel. If you aren't using The 30 or so files and the other cruft from the Cobalt LCD programs anyway, all the embedded kernel driver does is gives you the twiddle (the bar scanning back and forth on the second row of the lcd display) as you boot. Now we have visual progress of IPCop booting on the lcd anyway.

Here is an example of line 72 to 75 on one of my test boxes:

my $IFACE   = 'ppp0';         # -> What is the interface you want to monitor?

my $UPBITS    = 384;         # -> What's the maximum upload rate in kbits/second of your line?
my $DOWNBITS   = 1800;       # -> What's the maximum downlaod rate in kbits/second of your line?


Edit 5/26/08 2:14 am PDT: The lcd file I used for this build I needed to change the output from /dev/tty12 that doesn't exist on a headless box to output to /dev/null instead. Also for those of you that are using a console and nullmodem cable, I fixed the part where the terminal stops, it was caused by not putting the & after lcd -loop in rc.sysinit. Build is ready now.