[Simh] EXT :Re: C9.io

Fri Dec 1 20:48:09 EST 2017

> On 1 Dec 2017, at 21:47, Timothe Litt <litt at ieee.org> wrote:
> 
> Xeon etc is probably overkill.
> 
> Use a Raspberry Pi.  About 7W under load with a monitor, KB, mouse w/WiFi active - you don't need a monitor, KB, or mouse once setup.  You can disable the WiFi. (A couple more watts if you use a magnetic drive, which I recommend).
> 
> One time cost is about $100 once you add a case, power supply & SD card to the $35 board.
> 
I’ve got the whole HECNET area 7 running on two ARM machines: a cubietruck and an Odroid-C1 that will get soon replaced by a Raspberry Pi model 3. 

I just allow HECNET access, no public internet one. Except for an ITS machine which responds to anyone trying to TELNET to my network, just for the laughs. And I password-protected the thing. If any sixties-seventies hacker wants to break into my network I will feel almost honoured ;)

> For a reasonable workload, that should suffice and is about as inexpensive to run as you can get.  Pi 3 is a 64-bit ARM CPU @1.2 GHz CPU - with 1GB memory, ethernet, WiFi, & bluetooth. (Some  OSs are only 32 bit at the moment.)  You can easily scale up with multiple hosts - it takes quite a number to reach the price of a Xeon.
> 
Please notice the last revisions of KLH10 can run under ARM without problem, and can actually idle correctly…

SIMH machines are computationaly cheap, unless you are going to run a full-loaded VAX. 
> If you stick with standard packages, security is pretty much one-time setup & periodic package updates (which includes the kernel).  As it's cheap enough to be dedicated to simulation, it's not a disaster if something bad does happen - as long as anything else on your internal network distrusts the Pi & its guests.  If you put the emulated OS on the public network, that's a bigger exposure than the host OS.
> 
First thing: configure SSH to be key-interchange based and disallow password logins. And the rest of the song: keep telnet closed (but you will have to keep it open to allow serial logins to your simh instances), don’t run anything as root (completely possible with simh 4.0 and VDE networking), and so on...

> If you just provide SSH access, I recommend disabling passwords and using RSA keys only.  It frustrates the script kiddies, and you don't have to worry about password quality.
> 
Absolutely
> Cloud hosting has its own pitfalls.  I'm not a fan.
> 
> Someone mentioned running on a cellphone.  That's tough if you want remote access because as frequently documented here, WiFi implementations don't get along with SimH's networking.
> 
An alternative would be to use an old laptop, install a light linux bistro on it and use it to host your simh machines. It will run faster than an ARM (with a little bit more of power usage) but if the battery is still alive you’ll have a free UPS attached to your datacenter-in-a-box :)

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