2.2 VEGA ZZ installation on Asus Eee PC

 

2.2.1 Introduction
2.2.2 What's you need
2.2.3 Preparing the Windows XP CD
2.2.4 Windows XP installation
2.2.5 Using a SD card to increase the storage
2.2.6 VEGA ZZ installation
2.2.7 Optimizing the VEGA ZZ configuration
2.2.8 Increasing the Eee PC computational power
2.2.9 More power ...

 

2.2.1 Introduction

With the Eee PC product line, Asus introduced a new notebook concept in which weight and dimensions are minimized to use the PC anywhere. This small PC is perfect to create an ultra-mobile workstation to explain the molecular modelling concepts in the classroom, to realize a new idea anywhere, to control your HPC system trough the wireless connection, etc.
At this time, Eee PC is available only with the powerful Xandros operating system that is unable to run VEGA ZZ. Fortunately, Asus included all drivers to install Windows XP, making possible to run VEGA ZZ. Due to the small SSD (Solid State Disk) storage system, the installation procedure requires attention to reduce the waste of disk space.

 

Eee PC with Windows   Eee PC running VEGA ZZ

 

2.2.2 What's you need

 

2.2.3 Preparing the Windows XP CD

Not all components installed by the standard Windows setup are really required (e.g. the driver database, some services, etc) and thanks to nLite is possible to exclude some of them to reduce the disk space occupied by the operating system.
A complete tutorial to create a slimmed installation CD is available at: http://wiki.eeeuser.com:80/howto:nlitexp

 

2.2.4 Windows XP installation

Before proceeding the Windows setup, backup your data because they will be overwritten.

After the reset, the Windows XP Setup procedure will start.

 

WARNING:
the following step deletes all data previously saved in the SSD and they will lost definitively.

To reserve more disk space, you could disable the Automated System Recovery (ASR):

The system restore service is no more needed and so it can be disabled:

Optionally, to speed-up the boot and increase the amount of free physical memory, the remote assistance and the desktop sharing van be disabled:

Driver installation:

Update the operating system:

These steps reduce the amount of disk space, removing the backup files:

sfc /purgecache

and press return to clear the system backup files.

Some other files can be deleted:

To increase the available disk space, it's possible to reduce the Internet Explorer file cache to 8 Mb and the size of the swap file used as virtual memory.

Change the size of the swap file:

If you expanded the memory of your Eee PC from 512 Mb to 2 Gb, installing a 2 Gb SoDIMM DDR2 667 MHz module, you could consider to disable the virtual memory, selecting No paging file.

 

2.2.5 Using a SD card to increase the storage

A 4-16 Gb SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity) card is a good choice to increase the storage size, moving some directories on it.

A new SDHC card is pre-formatted with the FAT32 file system that is not very efficient to manage the disk space due to the too big cluster size. For this reason, some disk space is lost writing small files on the SD. To avoid the problem, you could format the card with NTFS file system that generates smaller clusters. Unluckily, Windows XP doesn't allow to format the removable devices with NTFS, but the convert.exe included in the standard Windows distribution can convert any disk from FAT16/32 to NTFS.

convert e: /fs:ntfs

Use the E:\Program Files directory to install the new software, reserving the internal SSD for the system files.
Another good idea to is to move the Outlook Express data files from the user profile directory in C: to E:

 

2.2.6 VEGA ZZ installation

In this section will be explained how to install VEGA ZZ on the Eee PC.

The Eee PC has a Celeron M CPU and the components for the other CPU models can be omitted:

At this step, you need to activate VEGA ZZ, following the procedure explained in the Installation and activation chapter.

 

2.2.7 Optimizing the VEGA ZZ configuration

VEGA ZZ 2.2.0 can detect the Eee PC and automatically enables some window optimizations, but if you are running a previous version, it may be possible that you need to switch from 800x480 to 800x600 screen resolution to manage the large windows.
The Intel GMA 900 graphic card is full working but has a limited OpenGL support:

Intel claims OpenGL 1.4 features, but bugs and missing extensions makes this graphic adapter OpenGL 1.2 compliant only.

For the best view experience:

 

2.2.8 Increasing the Eee PC computational power

The Eee PC is factory downclocked to increase the battery life, but if the stock computational power is not enough for you, it's possible to change the Front Side Bus (FSB) from 70 to 100 MHz. In this way, the CPU goes from 630 to 900 MHz with a 30 % increment of the computational power. This is not a real overclock because the Celeron M was designed by Intel to run with a 100 MHz FSB.

You can change FSB in any time, but I found problems suspending the system when the FSB differs from 70 MHz (system lock).

WARNING:
The Author of this guide accepts no responsibility for hardware/software damages.

 

2.2.9 More power ...

If the Celeron M @ 900 MHz is not enough for your MM calculations, VEGA ZZ can help you to break this barrier thanks to the possibility to run remote jobs (see Configuration of remote hosts).

 

2.2.9.1 What's you need

 

2.2.9.2 Configuration of the Windows host

In this section will be explained how to configure a remote host in order to perform MM calculations submitted by the Eee PC (or any other remote PC).

Now you need to configure the WarpTel service that is an encrypted telnet daemon (for more information, click here).

ipconfig /all

and press return.

It's possible to run WarpTel as Windows service and the procedure to do it is explained in the WarpTel manual.

 

2.2.9.3 Configuration of the Linux host

The configuration of a Linux host is a little bit hard and it's reserved to power users:

AMMP is the calculation module and must be installed:

chmod 755 ammp

Now, you must install the WarpGate daemon that creates the encrypted tunnel between the host and the client. To do it, you must be logged as root.

; Local port  Local conn.  Remote host                 Remote port  Type  Key
; ========================================================================================================================================
  7000            N        localhost                   23            TCP   <Put here the key generated by WarpKeyGen>
ln -s /usr/local/bin/warpgated S98warpgated

 

2.2.9.4 Configuration of the client (Eee PC)

The client configuration is finish and now a test is required.

 

2.2.9.4 Running a remote calculation

To do this step, the Eee PC must be connected to the LAN or to Internet if the host is connected to it. This is the best scenario because in this way you can use anywhere the computational power of the remote host. The Eee PC connection can be done indifferently by Ethernet or wireless adapters.

We successfully tested the Eee PC with a dual AMD Operton 250 @ 2.4 GHz workstation running Windows XP and a eight dual core AMD Opteron 875 @ 2.2 GHz (16 cores) HPC system running 64 bit Linux (CentOS distribution): imagine the amazing power of this last system inside your small Eee PC ...