Now 250€, EU eBay new Dell Edge 680 16 core C3958, 32GB RAM 240GB SSD 6x1GbE 2xSFP+

Hardware Questions and Recommendations
1

EDIT:

Seller increased the price by 80€, not such a good deal any more, unless they will still accept bids in the 160-170€ range.

Someone is selling new Dell Edge 680s on NL eBay, shipped by UPS.

These are pretty beefy, see the complete specs at Dell Edge E42W VEP1400 620/640/680 HW discovery.

Pretty good deal, IMHO.

Note they have two small fans at the bottom.

Seller still have 40+ units in stock https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/226214736858.

Ordered one, will try to update my old 620 thread once it arrives.

5 Likes
2

That's probably faster than my current desktop computer... :sob:

3

Does anyone know what kind of (idle) power consumption one can expect from that particular kind of box when running modern Linux?

1 Like
4

From the PDF I linked to in the old thread -

image
image1670×206 21.6 KB

thank god electricity is cheap :slight_smile:

5

Thanks for the heads up. I managed to get one of these today. Trying to get it going but no dice till now. I cant seem to get pass installing DiagOS as it fails. Trying to follow your guide at servethehome but i don't understand how to restart the installer. Wat is the command for it ? Is there another way to flash the bios files ?

6

WTF, when did you order, and where are you located, NL ?

After you've modded the shell script ?

./install.sh

Mine's arriving on Tue, if you can't get it to work until then.

7

Ordered as soon as I saw your post today. The guy selling these is located 1km away from where I live, so I just picked it up as he was fine with it.

I cant modify the shell script as I cant ( don't know how ) to restart the installer after executing i2cset -y 1 0x22 0 0 b to kill the watchdog. I just rebooted and pressing ctrl_c doesn't kill anything, it keeps showing the selection of installation devices repeatedly.

8

no wonder you already got one :slight_smile:

you shouldn't reboot.

are you saying this part isn't working for you ?

ONIE-RECOVERY:/ # i2cset -y 1 0x22 0 0 b
ONIE-RECOVERY:/ # ./diag-installer-x86_64-dellemc_vep1400_c3538-r0-3.43.3.81-27-2022-12-08.bin
Ignoring Verifying image checksum ... OK.
cur_dir / archive_path /diag-installer-x86_64-dellemc_vep1400_c3538-r0-3.43.3.81-27-2022-12-08.bin tmp_dir /tmp/tmp.aaQT41
Preparing image archive ...sed -e '1,/^exit_marker$/d' /diag-installer-x86_64-dellemc_vep1400_c3538-r0-3.43.3.81-27-2022-12-08.bin | tar xf - OK.
Diag-OS Installer: platform: x86_64-dellemc_vep1400_c3538-r0
platform found vep1400
platform vep1400 is supported.
console port ttyS0

****************************
Select Installation Device
****************************
1.SSD
2.USB Disk
3.eMMC
0.Quit
---------------------------
Please select the device type that DIAG OS will be install on : ^C
ONIE-RECOVERY:/ #
9

ok I made some progress with restarting the installer but I cannot find the install.sh file. I cannot cd to /tmp/tmp.ii23eo/installer (in my case)

10

ls -l /tmp/tmp.ii23eo/ ?

11

This is the extraxtion folder:
"cur_dir / archive_path /var/tmp/installer tmp_dir /tmp/tmp.GnhadL"

output ls :

ONIE-RECOVERY:/ # ls -l /tmp/tmp.GnhadL/
ls: /tmp/tmp.GnhadL/: No such file or directory

PS:
on install failure, it automatically removes the /tmp/tmp.GnhadL/ dir !
`Installing grub for diag-os
ERROR: grub-install failed on: /dev/mmcblk0
Installing for i386-pc platform.
grub-install: warning: this GPT partition label contains no BIOS Boot Partition; embedding won't be possible.
grub-install: warning: Embedding is not possible. GRUB can only be installed in this setup by using blocklists. However, blocklists are UNRELIABLE and their use is discouraged..
grub-install: error: will not proceed with blocklists.
Removing /tmp/tmp.GnhadL
Failure: Unable to install image: /diag-installer-x86_64-dellemc_vep1400_c3538-r0-3.43.3.81-27-2022-12-08.bin
This should be not reachable unless something wrong is there!!!!!

12

So far, it looks fine, execute it again ?

13

ok I got it this time. the directory changes when executed for the second time.
editing with VI but its not the 446'th line, but the 466'th

rebooted and got Shell. Is this normal or it has to be something else ?

UEFI Interactive Shell v2.1
EDK II
UEFI v2.60 (American Megatrends, 0x0005000D)
Mapping table
FS0: Alias(s):HD0f65535a1:;BLK1:
PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x13,0x0)/Sata(0x5,0xFFFF,0x0)/HD(1,GPT,BC9271F3-8C68-4A4B-9731-60D10D237B0C,0x800,0x40000)
FS1: Alias(s):HD1b:;BLK4:
PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x1C,0x0)/SD(0x0)/HD(1,GPT,CF769554-7064-4202-BD73-E42A0680BFDD,0x800,0x40000)
BLK0: Alias(s):
PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x13,0x0)/Sata(0x5,0xFFFF,0x0)
BLK2: Alias(s):
PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x13,0x0)/Sata(0x5,0xFFFF,0x0)/HD(2,GPT,6E774221-1F51-469A-A030-0D6AC33C2BB5,0x40800,0x400000)
BLK3: Alias(s):
PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x1C,0x0)/SD(0x0)

Press ESC in 1 seconds to skip startup.nsh or any other key to continue.
Shell> ls
ls: Current directory not specified.
Shell> lsblk
'lsblk' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program, or script file.

Shell>

14

I'll double check the line no once I get my unit, and change the STH post, if needed.

You're in the UEFI cli.

1 Like
15

Ok after trying everything I could find on the forums I finally somehow managed to install DiagOS on ssd. This time, not modding the shell script but messing / trying to erase partitions of ssd and disabling the CSM setting in bios. I wonder if the last one did the trick.
After flashing / upgrading bios, got opnsense up and running. The only disturbing problem is that the fans keep spinning for no reason on medium speed, I think. Very annoying. Even a bios reset didn't help.

Edit;

ok I think that is it. I installed DiagOS on 16GB nvme device by just disabling CSM in bios !

2 Likes
16

This hardware looks great. Nowadays, I am using Qhora-322 with the OpenWrt system. I want to switch to enterprise-level hardware. Does Dell Edge 680 support IPMI?

17

The console port is as close as you can get to out-of-band management.

1 Like