[HECnet] PyDECnet and IPv6

[John H. Reinhardt]

On 12/1/2020 7:18 PM, Paul Koning wrote:
>
>> On Dec 1, 2020, at 5:15 PM, David Moylan <djm at wiz.net.au> wrote:
>>
>>> From: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE [mailto:owner-
>>> hecnet at Update.UU.SE] On Behalf Of John H. Reinhardt
>>> Sent: Wednesday, 2 December 2020 6:18 AM
>>> To: hecnet at Update.UU.SE
>>> Subject: Re: [HECnet] PyDECnet and IPv6
>>>
>>> I had an Edgerouter Lite for my internet but upgraded to an Edgerouter 4 last
>>> year when I set up the VPN to the MacMini Colo in Las Vegas.
>>>
>>> Next I have to see if I can put Paul's PyDECnet on it for HECnet routing.
>> That sounds like an awesome challenge, however I don't know if you'll meet the base requirements.
>>
>> The edgerouter 1.x firmware ships with Python 2.7.3 and the 2.x firmware ships with Python 2.7.13.
>> Memory wise you have 1GB with around 600MB free on the ER4 and 500MB with around 200MB free on the ERL.
>>
>> And yes - you can add in linux packages to get Python 3 running on the Edgerouter, but I would recommend that you don't.
>>
>> The issue comes down to firmware upgrades. When you install a new firmware image, you risk breaking the third party addons.
> My approach would be to build a Python 3 from source and install it in the directory used for locally built code, which is under /usr/local (that's what the default installation procedure does).  That's a standard convention that should keep you out of the way of any packager-supplied standard bits.

Normally that would but the ER series is a little different.  The "firmware" upgrade replaces the whole / file system with pre-packaged installs.  They have a place you can put things to ride out the upgrade though. It's just a pain to do it.  Building on the ERL would be interesting also as it's meant purely as a run environment and most of the build chain doesn't exist and would have to be installed.  At one time when I was messing with the BIND9 DNS server I'd thought about building an ER build virtual machine (it's an ARM CPU) but didn't go through the trouble. I just moved my DNS and DHCP to a RasPi where it's all much easier.

> I install Python3 and PyDECnet on my (old, 2 GB total flash size) BeagleBone Black.  To run the build locally rather than cross-building -- slower but easy -- I had to plug in a micro-SD card for extra space, but once the build was done the actual installed code fit fine on that root file system.  You can see the result on HECnet, node PYBBB.
>
> 	paul
>
-- 

John H. Reinhardt