[lug] NSLU2

[Siegfried Heintze]

Of course, I was assuming you were going to hack your slug before next
Saturday. Can you server NFS without hacking it? I thought it only served
CIFS unless you hacked it after which it could server both CIFS via SAMBA
and NFS. I was not clear if the Samba was only serving its internal flash
drives (like a linksys wrt54G can do) or the external USB driver you plug in
the back.

 

Siegfried

 

  _____  

From: lug-bounces at lug.boulder.co.us [mailto:lug-bounces at lug.boulder.co.us]
On Behalf Of Siegfried Heintze
Sent: Saturday, February 11, 2006 2:02 PM
To: 'Boulder (Colorado) Linux Users Group -- General Mailing List'
Subject: RE: [lug] NSLU2

 

So Bear,

Are you going to bring your slug to the install fest next Saturday? Please?
So you can help others like me hack our slugs? I'll buy a slug and a disk if
you are planning to be at the install fest.

Siegfried 

 

  _____  

From: lug-bounces at lug.boulder.co.us [mailto:lug-bounces at lug.boulder.co.us]
On Behalf Of Bear Giles
Sent: Saturday, February 11, 2006 10:21 AM
To: Boulder (Colorado) Linux Users Group -- General Mailing List
Subject: [lug] NSLU2

 

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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