Squid on nanobsd alix but cache to USB

xbipin

i followed the guide on this link
http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=34116.0;prev_next=next

and rebooted the box once the usb drive was formatted etc, on boot it takes long to go pass through "setting up embedded specific environment …" then it gets stuck on "external config loader 1.0 is now starting ... da0s1"
the only way to go pass through that is to unplug usb drive and replug quickly and then it gets mounted

any way to disable that external config loader?

i cant see you getting good performance out of squid running on a USB stick.
its gonna be slow i would suspect. you would be alot better with a hard
drive.

Good Luck

xbipin

considering a network with 20 machines and squid for caching antivirus updates and windows updates and with a fast USB flash drive as well as a internet connection with just 16mbps speed, its worth a try. if it really ends up slow, ill add a HDD once i manage to get pass the issue on boot

xbipin

it seems there is some bug in that external config loader php script, can some1 else confirm this, create a single partition on a usb flash drive and format it using newfs command then reboot the box and see if u can go pass the config loader

athurdent

Using a USB flash drive as cache will most likely slow down your user's surfing experience. I'd rather look into setting up a local WSUS Server, maybe you are able to put an Anti-Virus Management Server there, too.

xbipin

what i dont understand is if a USB drive can read at 28MBps and write at 15MBps then how is it slower than a 16mbps internet connection?

xbipin

can i connect a ide cable from alix to a 2.5" ide hdd and use cf card to run pfsense and hdd for squid cache?
will the 2.5" ide drive power from the ide port itself or do i need to connect a external power supply to it?

jimp

Likely need an extra power supply.

ALIX is underpowered for running a cache for more reasons than the CF, though.

Squid uses 10-12MB of RAM for each GB of disk cache, plus the RAM for squid on its own, plus the RAM for what pfSense needs.

You can't effectively run a cache on ALIX when it only has 256MB RAM, even with a hard drive.

xbipin

i emailed the alix creator and he said it will power off the ide cable itself, no external power supply required.

basically i just need to cache antivirus and windows update and all in all it might just consume a max of 2GB

probably the new version of alix with msata and 2-4gb of ram with a dual core amd processor would be give more power to run squid and a lot more i guess but that should be out by mid 2013

xbipin

i connected USB HDD and mounted as /var/squid and everything works well but i get one error in system log

squid[50178]: Failed to verify one of the swap directories, Check cache.log for details. Run 'squid -z' to create swap directories if needed, or if running Squid for the first time.