"killer replacement for the NSLU2"

[pushbx]

I got a detail set of performance number here:

http://computingplugs.com/index.php/SheevaPlug_Performance

cpu, sdhc, usb, network and power usage numbers.

Jon Pounder wrote:

lance_benson wrote:

Interesting .... but - "same price range" = double the cost the way I
see it, and until its got good software support its not very useful.

I'd also like to see a benchmark comparison doing something useful,
since clockspeed isn't everything, especially for a cpu I have never
heard of before.

Yeah looks like it has potential but it has to prove itself first.



> Martin Michlmayr concludes that Marvell Semiconductor's new SheevaPlug Plug Computer $100 reference design is "a killer replacement for the NSLU2."
>
> Here: http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS2356496718.html
>
> and here: http://www.cyrius.com/journal/debian/kirkwood/sheevaplug/nslu2-killer
>
> Debian, etc.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>  

[CN-5]

On Wed, 18 Mar 2009 09:04:31 +1030, Rod Whitby wrote:
> Marvell has donated one Sheeva device to the nslu2-linux core team, and
> Brian Zhou will be using that to create an Optware feed for it.
> Discussion about the optware feed is also welcome on this list.

Brian,
How is optware feed setup for SheevaPlug coming?  Is there a way (a link)
through which I can view the available optware modules for Sheeva, running
from my slugosbe -- WITHOUT CLOBBERING MY SLUG?

I am about to order a SheevaPlug.  From what I have understood from the very
few msgs in this forum,  I may be able to add the required modules from your
new optware feed directly, out of the box,  WITHOUT first having to make any
flash upgrades.  Is that correct?

Brian, are you able to repeatedly reboot the S.Plug with harddrive attached to
the usb, and using some of the optware installed components from there?

[brian_zhou]

See http://plugcomputer.org/plugforum/index.php?topic=74.0
and http://plugcomputer.org/plugforum/index.php?topic=92.0

Ideally an optware ipkg feed should match exactly the libc version and toolchain version of the base OS. But in this case, it would be too open-ended as people run various distros on it. On the distros I've tried (Marvell rootfs, Ubuntu, and Debian Lenny), the existing optware/cs08q1armel feed works just fine. If you're going to run slugos5{le,be} on it, there's no reason why optware/slugos5{le,be} would not work. BTW, the optware/cs08q1armel feed works great on new NAS devices from QNAP, Synology, and Buffalo.

With a full distro like Debian, there's less need for optware. Unless you need some exotic package, or you need specific version/config of some package that you can leverage from optware cross build.

The stock Ubuntu that comes with SheevaPlug has 2.6.22 kernel, with quite lot of Marvell kirkwood specific changes. It does not come with any kernel module though.

Kirkwood support starts to be available in kernel.org 2.6.29, and most will be incorporated in 2.6.30. That's why there're people building and offering 2.6.30-rc kernel uImage and modules. I also created a optware/sheevaplug ipk feed for that purpose.

For most people, starting with the bundled ubuntu (in the internal flash) and use newer kernel image/modules probably would be the easiest to get started. Martin Michlmayr has excellent instruction of debian lenny installation on sheevaplug:
  http://www.cyrius.com/debian/kirkwood/sheevaplug/

For people interested in minimal distro, I've heard from Mike Westerhof that he can successfully tftp/nfs boot and run slugos5 rootfs on sheevaplug. You can also use the small rootfs provided by Marvell in their devkit - it does not have udev, so you'll need to mknod yourself, for packages you can use optware/cs08q1armel.

I switch among different kernel and rootfs quite a lot, so I use tftp/nfs boot the most. Other boot options are: internal flash, usb, or sd/sdhc card. Your choice depend on your usage.

  Internal NAND flash
    + internal
    - a little bit more involved to flash, jffs2/ubifs is needed
    - 512MB, plenty for kernel and rootfs, not enough for lot of packages or storage

  USB
    + easy to partition and construct file system
    - occupies the only USB port
    - external, additional power supply if hard disk
    - boot order still seems a bit tricky with a hub

  sd/sdhc
    + easy to partition and construct file system
    - some SDHC cards need patched kernel even with 2.6.30-rc8
    - to boot from SD card, you'll need to replace u-boot

Of note, there's also great effort of porting native inferno OS to SheevaPlug and it already boots to sh, network is working, crypto engine is partially working. See http://plugcomputer.org/plugforum/index.php?topic=94.0 for pointers.

I just wish I had more time outside of work, lots of things to learn. Hope the above info helps. Besides the forum/wiki, there's also an #openplug IRC channel on freenode that plug people hang out.

Best regards,

-Brian

--- In nslu2-linux@..., CN <t4chacko@...> wrote:

>
> On Wed, 18 Mar 2009 09:04:31 +1030, Rod Whitby wrote:
> > Marvell has donated one Sheeva device to the nslu2-linux core team, and
> > Brian Zhou will be using that to create an Optware feed for it.
> > Discussion about the optware feed is also welcome on this list.
>
> Brian,
> How is optware feed setup for SheevaPlug coming?  Is there a way (a link)
> through which I can view the available optware modules for Sheeva, running
> from my slugosbe -- WITHOUT CLOBBERING MY SLUG?
>
> I am about to order a SheevaPlug.  From what I have understood from the very
> few msgs in this forum,  I may be able to add the required modules from your
> new optware feed directly, out of the box,  WITHOUT first having to make any
> flash upgrades.  Is that correct?
>
> Brian, are you able to repeatedly reboot the S.Plug with harddrive attached to
> the usb, and using some of the optware installed components from there?
>

[David Given]

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Brian Zhou wrote:
[...]
> Kirkwood support starts to be available in kernel.org 2.6.29, and most will be incorporated in 2.6.30. That's why there're people building and offering 2.6.30-rc kernel uImage and modules. I also created a optware/sheevaplug ipk feed for that purpose.

I'm using Martin Michlmayr's 2.6.30-rc8 kernel; disk performance is
about *twice* that of the stock kernel, and you get all the goodness of
a Debian boot/initrd pair. (Root on RAID, for example.) However, there
seems to be something odd going on with the NAND flash driver.

The stock u-boot only supports booting from NAND, network, and USB. But
the USB boot support is very picky and horribly slow --- I had a
situation where swapping two devices on my USB hub would make the
difference between a successful boot and a crash. I recommend the u-boot
upgrade that Martin Michlmayr links to, which adds SD card boot support.
It's reliable and much faster than USB.

- --
┌─── [e-mail] ───── http://www.cowlark.com ─────
│
│ "People who think they know everything really annoy those of us who
│ know we don't." --- Bjarne Stroustrup
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[LaneD130]

Well you'll be glad... no hang on, most of you probably don't care that my shiny new SheevaPlug has arrived. However, for those of you in the UK and still awaiting yours, don't lose hope; they took their time, but they are on their way!

I remembered reading that Marvell were donating a SheevaPlug to the NSLU2 dev. team back in March, and that Brian Zhou was organizing an Optware feed. However, I can't see any mention on the nslu2-linux.org site. Please would a kind-hearted gent point me in the right direction?

Also, it would be great to hear how others are getting on with theirs. I would put myself very firmly in the "noob" category, so any hints, tips, suggestions, etc. would be very gratefully received.

TIA, Davii

[Mike Westerhof (mwester)]

On Fri 21/08/09  9:46 AM , "LaneD130" <LaneD130@...> wrote:

> Well you'll be glad... no hang on, most of you probably don't care
> that my shiny new SheevaPlug has arrived. However, for those of you
> in the UK and still awaiting yours, don't lose hope; they took their
> time, but they are on their way!
> I remembered reading that Marvell were donating a SheevaPlug to the
> NSLU2 dev. team back in March, and that Brian Zhou was organizing an
> Optware feed. However, I can't see any mention on the nslu2-linux.org
> site. Please would a kind-hearted gent point me in the right
> direction?
> Also, it would be great to hear how others are getting on with
> theirs. I would put myself very firmly in the "noob" category, so any
> hints, tips, suggestions, etc. would be very gratefully received.
> TIA, Davii

Can't say about optware for sure, but I think that one of the existing optware feeds works just fine on the Sheevaplug.

The development versions of SlugOS currently run on the Sheevaplug - although installation is largely manual.  If someone has interest in SlugOS on the plug, I might finish that work up.

Mike (mwester)

[starnamer-2]

I only came across the NSLU2 a few months back while looking for a NAS device to replace an aged Linux file server. The NSLU2 running Debian can do so much more, but it looks like the SheevaPlug its successor.

I, for one, would be interested in hearing how things progress, particularly if a standard distro (Debian?) can be got going to the extent that the average user could just flash the device and be up and running. The extra flash and ram would certainly help!

Is there a blog? Group list?

[LrdShaper]

starnamer-2 wrote:

Is there a blog? Group list?

There's a forum for it on http://plugcomputer.org/plugforum/index.php and can already run a number of Linux distros. Martin Michlmayr has posted a simple how-to to manually install Debian on the SheevaPlug here http://www.cyrius.com/debian/kirkwood/sheevaplug/ and a fast growing wiki also exists here http://plugcomputer.org/plugwiki/index.php/Main_Page

Brian also posted in the forum on how to go about using Optware on the plug http://plugcomputer.org/plugforum/index.php?topic=74.0

Cheers!

[Gregg C Levine-2]

Hello!
I agree.
It happens that the industrious people at the Slackware family of sites have
successfully ported that distribution over to this particular platform. This
therefore concludes my efforts to be porting Slackware to the NSLU2, but at
some point I will be obtaining one of the units, probably also a developer's
platform.....

I'll probably continue to be here so as to provide advice and everything
else.
--
Gregg C Levine hansolofalcon@...
"The Force will be with you always." Obi-Wan Kenobi
 


> -----Original Message-----
> From: nslu2-linux@... [mailto:nslu2-linux@...] On
Behalf

> Of LrdShaper
> Sent: Sunday, August 23, 2009 12:47 AM
> To: nslu2-linux@...
> Subject: Re: [nslu2-linux] SheevaPlug
>
>
>
>
> starnamer-2 wrote:
> >
> > Is there a blog? Group list?
> >
>
> There's a forum for it on http://plugcomputer.org/plugforum/index.php and
> can already run a number of Linux distros. Martin Michlmayr has posted a
> simple how-to to manually install Debian on the SheevaPlug here
> http://www.cyrius.com/debian/kirkwood/sheevaplug/ and a fast growing wiki
> also exists here http://plugcomputer.org/plugwiki/index.php/Main_Page
>
> Brian also posted in the forum on how to go about using Optware on the

plug
> http://plugcomputer.org/plugforum/index.php?topic=74.0
>
> Cheers!
> --
> View this message in context:
http://www.nabble.com/%22killer-replacement-for-the-
> NSLU2%22-tp22550807p25100326.html
> Sent from the Nslu2 - Linux mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

[Neil Shephard]

--- In nslu2-linux@..., "Gregg C Levine" <hansolofalcon@...> wrote:
>
> Hello!
> I agree.
> It happens that the industrious people at the Slackware family of sites have
> successfully ported that distribution over to this particular platform.

HowTo and discussions on installing Gentoo on the SheevaPlug in the forums at http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-749438.html

[David Given]

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LaneD130 wrote:
[...]
> Also, it would be great to hear how others are getting on with theirs.

I've had mine for a while now, and it's quite happily running the
www.cowlark.com server stack running off a home made SSD made up of USB
keys. It's a decently powerful server (although Java on it is a pig ---
the only JVM I've found that will run servlets is OpenJDK, which is
strictly interpreted on ARM and rather slow), and it's really nice to
see the stack of hardware with no moving parts.

However, that's not to say it's problem-free. In particular:

- - the default u-boot's USB implementation only slightly works. It can
take minutes to probe the USB tree, and it's *extremely* unreliable
loading kernels from USB. In particular, it'll just refuse to touch
certain USB keys, and can get fatally confused by certain combinations
of devices. (I applied the u-boot upgrade that enables booting of the
MMC card, which solved all my problems.)

- - The SheevaPlug's USB hardware is generally a bit dodgy. I run RAID0
with 4x16GB USB keys; it took some time before I found a hub that worked
reliably for this, and even then, some devices behave generally funny (I
use a USB ethernet adaptor for my internal network, and it's got a bit
of a tendency to fail under load). Speaking to an engineer who's worked
with Marvell SoC devices, apparently most of them suffer from this.

- - Aside from hardware issues, the SheevaPlug is extremely limited by
only having one USB port. This is very restrictive to I/O throughput.
RAID5 on four devices is basically infeasible; there's just not enough
bandwidth available (RAID5 on 3 devices writes at ~20MB/s. RAID5 on 4
devices writes at 0.5MB/s). You may want to consider an OpenRD, which is
twice the price and still has support issues but does at least have SATA.

Of course, I'm running mine as a full server off an external hard drive.
If you're want to use a cut-down system running off the internal flash,
a lot of these problems go away.

- --
David Given
dg@...
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