[Noisebridge-discuss] Access

Jake jake at spaz.org
Thu Jul 4 22:30:52 UTC 2013


On Thu, 4 Jul 2013, Jonathan Lassoff wrote:

> I'm not suggesting that this *needs* to come off of minotaur now, I'm
> just hypothesizing how we could make it even more awesome and
> reliable.

i think it has been pretty reliable for the past two years.  this is the 
only time it has fucked up and it seems clear to me that it's a hardware 
problem, which surely can be solved.  perhaps the hard drive is failing?

> That's exactly my point: we've added a lot of moving parts to
> minotaur, when really all we're doing with the keypads is super
> simple. Looking for certain combinations of keypresses and sending
> several bits of state back to the keypad.
> Running this on something more solid state and less-consumptive should
> make it easier to add battery backups, and isolate the few components
> that are needed to make the door work.

my view is that since minotaur is already running, it's no big deal to 
have it do this stuff too.. as opposed to adding a new piece of gear. 
Also, do you think the raspberry pi is reliable?  hint:  sudoroom has been 
using one for their door, using baron.py and some other stuff, and they 
have been having like 50% downtime.

> Probably a good idea. It's still just attached to the Parallel port, 
> right? Something is latching down those pins, or the UART goes offline, 
> uncontrolled or something.

it has only happened once, ever, that i know of, and i wasn't even there. 
minotaur doesn't have a parallel port, it has a USB to parallel adaptor 
(for using old printers) and that peripheral is how it opens the gate.

> I still have no idea what's causing the lockups. We'd need to see what's 
> getting logged on the kernel's console. Any idea what's wrong with it?

i was too busy to look in the logs but i can tell you it was tuesday 
afternoon and evening when it locked up.  look for the reboots.

=jake



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