[lug] NSLU2

[Bear Giles]

Followup to the earlier discussion on hacking the NSLU2 fileserver.

I bought one at Microcenter ($100 before $10 mgfr rebate), plus an 
external USB drive.  I haven't flashed it yet but can share a fair 
amount of information in case others want to share experiences.

1) YOU CAN USE DEBIAN 'ARM' PACKAGES!  There are some nuances to this, 
but once you get the system up it's just a matter of 'apt-get'.  There's 
no need to rebuild applications and their libraries with a 
cross-compiler.  (But see below.)

2) There's no Debian installer.  Yet.

3) The current "best approach" appears to be finding a partition with 3 
GB of spare space, grabbing a standard makefile, then typing 'make 
debianslug-image' and then catching a movie.  (Note: you should first 
download two "free beer, not speech" source files from Intel, for the 
ethernet controller.  The documentation didn't make that clear.)  This 
builds the entire gnu toolchain, compiles the kernel, libc, and standard 
applications, etc.

You end up with two images.  The first is the kernel.  The second is the 
compressed root filesystem.  That filesystem is loaded into a ramdisk.

You also build an installer program that can negotiate with the NSLU's 
primary boot loader and TFTP client.

4) (This is where I'm at today)  You can flash a new kernel and root fs 
by simply running that installer!

5) Finally, you have to go through a 2-3 page checklist to finish 
setting up the system.  I believe it formats the attached disk and 
copies the root filesystem to it.  Afterwards you'll boot off of the 
attached disk, not the compressed image.  That frees up 16MB of memory 
since you no longer need the ramdisk.  After you finish the checklist 
you have a baby Debian system!

You might be able to run entirely out of memory, akin to Knoppix, but 
you're limited to a 16MB ramdisk image.  You can fit a surprising amount 
of stuff into 100 MB (a bootable ZIP disk), but 16MB will give you ssh, 
basic system tools, and not much more.

You should be able to include any desired kernel module.  I don't know 
how to change the setup - yet - but I plan to drop EXT2/3 and add JFS 
and selinux.

Finally, it appears that the processor speed is 133MHz and many people 
do a hardware mod to run it at 266MHz.  (Apparently it involves nothing 
more than removing a resistor.)  That's sounds slow, but the previously 
used Compaq servers that I used as my file/printer/mail servers for 
years were slower!  I'll leave mine unmodified since one of the primary 
purposes of this exercise was to find cheap, low-noise servers that I 
could leave up 24/7 risk free.   That's why I decommissioned the Compaqs 
-- they worked, but they were so old that I had begun to fear flaming 
failure!

More to follow, if there's interest....
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