Please read this page carefully before bringing your LOCKSS box on line. The page will tell you what you need to know before downloading and installing the software, and will lead you to instructions for doing so.
Bringing up a LOCKSS box is easy and does not require special technical expertise. The LOCKSS box works like an appliance (for example, a TIVO box is an appliance). Librarians have been bringing online LOCKSS boxes for ten years. The first time it may take you as little as an hour -- or it may take you a half day. If it takes longer than this -- contact 
, something is wrong. Once your LOCKSS box is online it requires very little maintenance, about 15 minutes to 1 hour per month.
Watch this YouTube Video of how to bring a LOCKSS box online http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wdcnXrQkaI
The LOCKSS software turns a PC into a digital preservation appliance. An appliance does one thing, and because it only does one thing it can be easy to use. The key to making the LOCKSS appliance easy to use is that it boots and runs from a CD and stores all its configuration information on media such as a floppy disk that is write-locked while the system is running. There is no software of any kind, even an operating system, on the PC's disk. The disk is used only to store preserved content.
The hardest things for a system administrator to do correctly are to install, configure and upgrade software so that there are no vulnerabilities an attacker can exploit, and especially to recover a system that an attacker has penetrated. The LOCKSS CD includes not just the LOCKSS daemon but also a pre-configured, highly secure operating system. Because the operating system is on a non-writable CD, and the configuration is on a non-writable floppy, it returns to a known-good state after every reboot. The system includes an automatic software update system that is protected by digital signatures, so it is upgraded automatically and securely. About every six months the LOCKSS team releases a new, updated CD. All the operator has to do is to burn the new CD image, swap CDs and reboot.
[edit] Computer Specifications
A machine to run LOCKSS requires:
- Enough CPU and memory. 1GHz VIA CPUs are the slowest we recommend, a 2.4GHz Celeron is plenty. We recommend at least 1GB of memory.
- A CD drive and optionally either:
- a floppy disk drive
- or a USB flash memory drive with a hardware write-protect switch.
- Enough disk. 250GB is enough to get started. The current CD supports both parallel ATA (PATA) drives and serial ATA (SATA) in native mode. Some adjustment of BIOS settings may be needed to handle SATA drives. Postponing buying disk until you really need it is a good strategy because of the rate at which drives get bigger at constant cost.
It is often possible to meet these requirements by reusing older machines, and we normally recommend this as being the most cost-effective way to deploy a LOCKSS box.
The LOCKSS Team started by reusing older machines but now buys new. The most recent machines we bought were similar to Iron Systems AR230R 1U rackmount systems configured with a 3.2GHz Celeron, 1GB of RAM, one or two 750GB or 1TB disk drives and a CD drive. These machines cost well under $1000 each.
Unless it is completely infeasible, we strongly advise buying from smaller vendors like Iron Systems. Almost all the problems we have encountered bringing up LOCKSS boxes have been on new machines from major manufacturers, and in particular from Dell. The reason is that Dell gets new chips first, and is highly efficient at managing inventory. So the machine you get is likely to have new chips in it for which the Open Source community in general and the OpenBSD team in particular has not yet had time to create the drivers. Smaller manufacturers get the new chips later, and are less efficient at managing inventory; the resulting longer lag time makes it much more likely that the necessary drivers will be in place.
We strongly advise buying low-cost hardware such as desktops or small, 1U servers. For normal use the LOCKSS system neither requires nor benefits from expensive hardware. Again, high end hardware or very recent models, especially from large PC manufacturers, often includes brand new chips and devices for which suitable drivers do not yet exist. The LOCKSS team does not have the resources to obtain and test all this new hardware, so it is more likely that unexpected problems will arise.
We do not currently support RAID. The LOCKSS system provides much higher levels of replication and fault-tolerance than RAID. If multiple disks are present, LOCKSS will use them all. Combining them into a single large RAID filesystem may cause problems, and doesn't provide significant advantages.
If you are in any doubt, please arrange to run the LOCKSS system in demo mode on the hardware you are thinking of buying - it acts as a "live CD" and will not affect the system's disk. Demo mode requires at least 750MB of RAM.
If you find yourself tempted to spend more than about $1200 on a new entry-level LOCKSS box, please contact us first.
[edit] Downloading and Installation
Briefly, you need to download a CD image, burn it to a CD-R, and use it to boot your hardware. Detailed instructions can be found on the Installation Instructions page.
Alternatively, if you would rather install LOCKSS on a
standalone Linux based machine, please visit this page.
