Needing to play with some certificates, I went looking for OpenSSL. Luckily I recalled that it was forked twice a while ago, and chose LibreSSL as the version most likely to be current for a Windows install. 

Download v 2.5.5 - no problems. Extract it, and start playing. Nothing but "WARNING: can't open config file: c:/libressl/ssl/openssl.cnf" errors.

I google - lots of people complaining, few with anything like an answer. Luckily there were enough clues to guess my way into something usable. 

Steps One, etc.
Download current LibreSSL for Windows (2.5.5 right now)
Extract zip to the folder you want it to live in.
Open CMD as Administrator, navigate to the executable location (x64 probably)
run set OPENSSL_CONF=D:\libressl-2.5.5-windows\x64\openssl.cfg (but with your correct path info from the last line)
run copy con openssl.cfg
immediately hit Control-C (this should create a blank file names openssl.cfg in the same folder you Set above)

You should now be able to run the openssl.exe executable without the error above. Will this lead to other problems from a blank CFG file? No idea - I was happy enough to get this far before leaving for a nice dinner.

Crap - the blank cfg file doesn't get you very far. Maybe I can pull some details from a default file.. or this pagehttp://www.flatmtn.com/article/setting-openssl-create-certificates ... I'll worry about it more after I get home and eat!

Windows?

Yeah - sort of like asking for a soup fork... but hey, I suspect managing Hyper-V on a Linux box would be rather interesting too. 

Remember these?







I found a conveniently placed 250v 20A outlet that I had forgotten about that was hidden behind a piece of furniture.

So I bought two Open Compute servers about 5 months ago.

I also found a newer bios for them, still too old for V2 E5 xeons but I now have a bios chip programmer and a spare bios chip or two to play around because I think I can mod the bios for V2 xeons.

I just got my third one in a week or so ago and configured last night.

My little Xeon server corner, 4x E5-2665's , 8x E5-2660's and 2x E5-2620's

A hand me down Asus laptop that SSL's into them.



All running Ubuntu 17.04, no Windows in sight.

I do need to tidy up the wiring tomorrow.

I saw the first pic and thought it looked like those open systems... Besides BIOS updates for new processors, what cobbling was required to get them up and running?

Good or bad, Hyper-V is what they pay me to deal with. I'd like to get back into Linux a little, but it's not an option at work right now, and with my current Linux skill level it would pay much worse if it was.

BIOS tweaking. Damn, but we play in different parts of the asylum. 

Bottom of the last pic - Green or Amber? It looks a little like an old AT, but there's no power switch where it should be, and the logo is a touch small for me to make it out.  

Almost zero issues, the newest bios is more of a bug fix compared to the original and does not allow newer cpu's than the original bios.

The biggest hurdle is having 208v or more.

They do not run any newer versions of  Windows than 7, they have issues with newer video cards but thats only an issue during an os install but I have plenty of old pci-e cards and run them headless so thats not an issue.

Newer Ubuntu's have a reboot problem that is fixed by running this command "echo "options mei-me disable_msi=1" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/mei-me.conf" " and manually reset after the halt command.

Thats it, no other issues other than remembering to power down both nodes and unplug the server before you remove a node otherwise the bios can get corrupted, happened twice.

They have been %100 solid.

They are very simple without alot of options, they are perfect for compute intensive tasks.

On the Win-Raid forum there are guides on how to mod the bios on boards, not board specific but bios brand/version specific,  to add support for v2 cpu's and raid cards and a few other things.

The V'2's are much more power efficient and a little faster.

AND the E5-26XX V2 are starting to come down to more reasonable prices so I plan to upgrade the servers to them next year.




Its a Compaq Deskpro 8086.

Its a "XT Compatable" software wise but not %100 hardware wise.

This was *the* very first system, along with the original Compaq Portable, to be 100% IBM-compatible.

Compaq dual mode amber screen that switches between MGA and CGA.
8086 running at 8 MHz vs IBM XT at 4 MHz. I replaced the original 8086 with a NEC V30 that is about %18 faster and has some 80186 instructions added.
8087 co-processor.
20 mb MFM hard drive.
640 K ram and this one has a 2mb ram add in card.
360k floppy.
1.4 MB floppy using a nwer 16 bit
I also Added a XTide card that lets me use IDE hard drives, up to 500 MB with CompaqDos 3.31 and up to 6.2 gb with MSDOS 6.22.
Old 8 bit 3com ethernet card.
Sometimes I add a old 8-bit ATI Wonder vga card.

Still runs, currently has Xenix 86 on it. Xenis 86 is very cool but VERY limited.

When I run DOS 3.31 its way more capable with networking and I configured it to set its time from a time server on boot, good thing because because it does not have an onboard real time clock and I hate entering the date and time on every boot under Xenix.

Sometimes I run MSDOS 6.22 and windows 3.0 on it.

I have not turned it on in a couple of years so I need to fire it up to make sure everything still works.

Back in the mid 80's that thing was EXPENSIVE!!

Yes, I recall the old / original Compaq systems. For some reason I thought they had the power toggle in the same place as the XT/AT boxes. 

Goodness... I recall the wonder of having a fully useful 'Luggable' computer. It's hard to believe how that has evolved into what we have today.