Ubuntu distro for NSLU2

[CORNELIU DOBAN]

Looks that there is an Ubuntu Jauntry distro for NSLU2 out there:

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/netboot/jaunty/rc/ (Netboot for NSLU2 "slug" systems)

Regards,
Corneliu

[CORNELIU DOBAN]

I saw it in this announcement, but it seems that the links are no longer valid:
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2009-April/000562.html

--- On Mon, 6/1/09, Corneliu Doban <corneliu_doban@...> wrote:

From: Corneliu Doban <corneliu_doban@...>
Subject: [nslu2-linux] Ubuntu distro for NSLU2
To: nslu2-linux@...
Date: Monday, June 1, 2009, 2:31 PM











   
           
           


     
      Looks that there is an Ubuntu Jauntry distro for NSLU2 out there:



http://cdimage. ubuntu.com/ netboot/jaunty/ rc/ (Netboot for NSLU2 "slug" systems)



Regards,

Corneliu




 

     

   
   
       
         
       
       








       


       
       


     

[Drew Gibson]

CORNELIU DOBAN wrote:

>
>
> I saw it in this announcement, but it seems that the links are no
> longer valid:
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2009-April/000562.html
>
> --- On *Mon, 6/1/09, Corneliu Doban /<corneliu_doban@...>/* wrote:
>
>
>     From: Corneliu Doban <corneliu_doban@...>< br>Subject:
>     [nslu2-linux] Ubuntu distro for NSLU2
>     To: nslu2-linux@...
>     Date: Monday, June 1, 2009, 2:31 PM
>
>     Looks that there is an Ubuntu Jauntry distro for NSLU2 out there:
>
>     http://cdimage. ubuntu.com/ netboot/jaunty/ rc/
>     <http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/netboot/jaunty/rc/> (Netboot for NSLU2
>     "slug" systems)
>
>     Regards,
>     Corneliu
>
>
>
>
>

Start here...
<http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/dists/jaunty/main/>

and I think you need to get to here...
<http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/dists/jaunty/main/installer-armel/current/images/ixp4xx/netboot/>

regards,

Drew

[CN-5]

Hi,

I am a long term user of slugosBE; have two servers running Apache/php, with
many user logins from the web (private, password protected access only).  
Have not made any upgrades or significant changes for a couple of year.  Have
not visited this forum for a while either

Yesterday at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco, I came across the very
new Marvell SheevaPlug, available for $99:

http://www.plugcomputer.org/

It is quite faster than the slug, has 512M memory (!) and the network port is
Gigabit (!).  I wonder if anybody here has ported a slug type distribution to that
one?  Since the development plug has two usb ports, it should work as is for all
applications of the current slug.  The final product (non development kit) has
only one usb port and is expected to be at about $40 or so.  More importantly,
it is open source from the get go and they are trying to sell this for
development of various home embedded applications.

At their small forum, I have noticed a user, bzhou with a product app.  I assume
it is the very helpful Brian of the same forum.  If so, Brian, how easy would it be
to bring a slugosbe type on that one, with similar modules?

Cordially,
CN

[Sam Reed]

Yup, quite a few people have started buying them..

Brian Zhou has recieved one for development. There is a make file in the Optware SVN feeds for it, along with various other files and such.

They come with Ubuntu 9.04 at stock, and Martin Michlmayr is working on Debian for it (requires an image tarball atm i believe)

http://www.cyrius.com/debian/kirkwood/sheevaplug/


Sam Reed

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

>
> Hi,
>
> I am a long term user of slugosBE; have two servers running Apache/php, with
> many user logins from the web (private, password protected access only).  
> Have not made any upgrades or significant changes for a couple of year.  Have
> not visited this forum for a while either
>
> Yesterday at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco, I came across the very
> new Marvell SheevaPlug, available for $99:
>
> http://www.plugcomputer.org/
>
> It is quite faster than the slug, has 512M memory (!) and the network port is
> Gigabit (!).  I wonder if anybody here has ported a slug type distribution to that
> one?  Since the development plug has two usb ports, it should work as is for all
> applications of the current slug.  The final product (non development kit) has
> only one usb port and is expected to be at about $40 or so.  More importantly,
> it is open source from the get go and they are trying to sell this for
> development of various home embedded applications.
>
> At their small forum, I have noticed a user, bzhou with a product app.  I assume
> it is the very helpful Brian of the same forum.  If so, Brian, how easy would it be
> to bring a slugosbe type on that one, with similar modules?
>
> Cordially,
> CN
>

[CN-5]

Hi Sam,

Thank you very much for the info.  This is is very encouraging.

You mentioned several members here are ordering...  I could not find any other
thread about the SheevaPlug in our forum.  Are there ?

Cordially, Chacko

--Original Message Text---
From: Sam
Date: Thu, 04 Jun 2009 10:38:45 -0000

Yup, quite a few people have started buying them..

Brian Zhou has received one for development. There is a make file in the
Optware SVN feeds for it, along with various other files and such.

They come with Ubuntu 9.04 at stock, and Martin Michlmayr is working on
Debian for it (requires an image tarball atm i believe)

http://www.cyrius.com/debian/kirkwood/sheevaplug/

Sam Reed

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

> Hi,
>
> I am a long term user of slugosBE; have two servers running Apache/php,
with
> many user logins from the web (private, password protected access only).
> Have not made any upgrades or significant changes for a couple of year.
Have
> not visited this forum for a while either
>
> Yesterday at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco, I came across the
very
> new Marvell SheevaPlug, available for $99:
>
> http://www.plugcomputer.org/
>
> It is quite faster than the slug, has 512M memory (!) and the network port is
> Gigabit (!). I wonder if anybody here has ported a slug type distribution to
that
> one? Since the development plug has two usb ports, it should work as is for
all
> applications of the current slug. The final product (non development kit) has
> only one usb port and is expected to be at about $40 or so. More
importantly,
> it is open source from the get go and they are trying to sell this for
> development of various home embedded applications.
>
> At their small forum, I have noticed a user, bzhou with a product app. I
assume
> it is the very helpful Brian of the same forum. If so, Brian, how easy would it
be
> to bring a slugosbe type on that one, with similar modules?
>
> Cordially,
> CN

[David Given]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

CN wrote:
[...]
> You mentioned several members here are ordering... I could not find any
> other thread about the SheevaPlug in our forum. Are there ?

The closest thing to a SheevaPlug community is the terrible web forum
here: http://openplug.org/plugforum

There's been occasional discussions of it here, but nothing of any great
significance.

I'm running Debian on mine --- Martin Michlmayr's instructions work
well. (In fact, this message ought to be sent out through mine, cross
fingers.) It's all fairly straightforward apart from u-boot's USB
support being extremely dodgy so that it's basically not feasible to
load the kernel and ramdisk from USB. OpenSlug, of course, is probably
going to use flash instead so that won't be a problem.

- --
┌─── [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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[CN-5]

David,

I have read Martin's instructions, and looked at many of the threads at the
plugforum.

I currently use in my slugosbe,  aptware modules, and quite a few optware
ones such as full apache, and others which were not available in the aptware.
Is optware apache, as an example, available on your plug/debian? [Pardon me if
I am way off,  I need to go brush up my terminology about distributions and
what runs currently on slugosbe.]

>OpenSlug, of course, is probably going to use flash instead

So there is an effort currently for getting OpenSlug to plug?  I have been away
from this forum for so long, I am forgetting most of the terminology...

How does that compare with the slugosbe I am running?  Is the kernel in
slugosbe in flash or is it coming from my 20Gb usb disk?  I reboot every so
often... After installing slugosbe, I had made only a couple of small changes in
the flash of each of my my two servers, so that when I run the same usb disk
image (or even same physical disk) from either server, the server identity such
as the local port and name, is recognizable by me.

I am almost ready to order a Sheevaplug.  I just want to get a better feel as to
there wont be a deal breaker in porting my extensive script based custom web
server with image processing, secure login, ... to the plug environment.  

Cordially,
CN

On Sat, 06 Jun 2009 13:00:11 +0100, David Given wrote:
CN wrote:
[...]
> You mentioned several members here are ordering... I could not find any
> other thread about the SheevaPlug in our forum. Are there ?

The closest thing to a SheevaPlug community is the terrible web forum
here: http://openplug.org/plugforum

There's been occasional discussions of it here, but nothing of any great
significance.

I'm running Debian on mine --- Martin Michlmayr's instructions work
well. (In fact, this message ought to be sent out through mine, cross
fingers.) It's all fairly straightforward apart from u-boot's USB
support being extremely dodgy so that it's basically not feasible to
load the kernel and ramdisk from USB. OpenSlug, of course, is probably
going to use flash instead so that won't be a problem.

[David Given]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

CN wrote:
[...]
> I currently use in my slugosbe, aptware modules, and quite a few optware
> ones such as full apache, and others which were not available in the
> aptware. Is optware apache, as an example, available on your
> plug/debian? [Pardon me if I am way off, I need to go brush up my
> terminology about distributions and what runs currently on slugosbe.]

This is full Debian, which means that *everything* is available --- all
22000-odd packages. apache is available, although I'm using lighttpd
instead.

I don't know whether it's possible to install optware packages on a full
Debian installation, but I assume so. You may not need to, however.

[...]
> How does that compare with the slugosbe I am running? Is the kernel in
> slugosbe in flash or is it coming from my 20Gb usb disk? I reboot every
> so often...

AFAIK, unless they've changed something, all SlugOSes boot from flash
(so the the kernel and root filesystem are on the flash device). They
may then optionally switch to using an alternative root filesystem on an
external disk if that's what you want, which I think is what your setup is.

[...]
> I am almost ready to order a Sheevaplug. I just want to get a better
> feel as to there wont be a deal breaker in porting my extensive script
> based custom web server with image processing, secure login, ... to the
> plug environment.

You *may* want to hold off a bit --- there's a device from Marvell
called the OpenRD coming up. It's the same processor as the SheevaPlug
but in a bigger box and has more ports --- VGA, seven USB ports (the
SheevaPlug only has one!), etc. Hopefully two Ethernet. Projected price
is $200 as opposed to the SheevaPlug's $100. OTOH, my SheevaPlug is
doing pretty well...

- --
┌─── [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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[CN-5]

--Original Message Text---
From: David Given
Date: Sat, 06 Jun 2009 21:28:55 +0100
> I don't know whether it's possible to install optware packages on a full
Debian installation, but I assume so. You may not need to, however.

David, For slugosbe, the aptware apache version had limitations for my site,
and the original builder of that limited apache could/did not want to continue.  
That is why I had to go with the optware pkgs.  There were a number of other
odds and ends pkgs which simply were not in the apt stream, at least ~3 years
ago.

>AFAIK, unless they've changed something, all SlugOSes boot from flash
(so the the kernel and root filesystem are on the flash device). They
may then optionally switch to using an alternative root filesystem on an
external disk if that's what you want, which I think is what your setup is.

What is the parent distribution of slugosbe, is that Debian?

>You *may* want to hold off a bit --- there's a device from Marvell
called the OpenRD coming up. It's the same processor as the SheevaPlug
but in a bigger box and has more ports --- VGA, seven USB ports (the
SheevaPlug only has one!), etc. Hopefully two Ethernet. Projected price
is $200 as opposed to the SheevaPlug's $100. OTOH, my SheevaPlug is
doing pretty well...

Well for me, smaller the better :) I am into micro pwr versions...  What about
the second usb mini on the dev system of SheevaPlug?  Is that not available as
a general purpose usb?  They would have the non development system, with
only one usb port, which is even smaller (the same size as the old wall warts),
and this my final target -- expected $40, and this is my interest for the
SheevaPlug.

Cordially,
CN

[David Given]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

CN wrote:
[...]
> What is the parent distribution of slugosbe, is that Debian?

No, SlugOS is based on OpenEmbedded (a mechanism for building embedded
Linux distributions). Debian is entirely different. Although, just to
confuse matters, it is possible to run Debian *on top of* SlugOS --- I
did for years.

[...]
> Well for me, smaller the better :) I am into micro pwr versions... What
> about the second usb mini on the dev system of SheevaPlug? Is that not
> available as a general purpose usb? They would have the non development
> system, with only one usb port, which is even smaller (the same size as
> the old wall warts), and this my final target -- expected $40, and this
> is my interest for the SheevaPlug.

The mini USB socket is a *slave* socket, and is intended for plugging
the SheevaPlug into a PC so you can get at the serial console. (And is
also used for JTAG debugging.) The only thing you can use for connect
hard drives and peripherals is the single USB master socket. There is an
SD card slot, though.

(Although it'd be entirely possible to use a NAS hard drive via the
Ethernet port; it's gigabit ethernet, so bandwidth isn't a problem. Now,
if only you had some NAS box which you could connect a USB hard drive to...)

BTW, today I finally turned off my server PC in favour of the
SheevaPlug. My entire system, web site, email, IMAP, spam detection, the
lot, is now running off it. The energy consumption went from 90W to 35W.

- --
┌─── [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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[CN-5]

On Sun, 07 Jun 2009 01:20:53 +0100, David Given wrote:

> BTW, today I finally turned off my server PC in favour of the
> SheevaPlug. My entire system, web site, email, IMAP, spam detection, the
> lot, is now running off it. The energy consumption went from 90W to 35W.

35W!  Wow, that is an hog energy compared to a slug at 6W with a network drive
:)  No wonder, the reports, the plug has been running rather hot.


When you added the modules, which stream did you use?  aptware?  Is there an
easy way for me to look at that stream listing from my slugosbe, to see which
modules are available and what versions.  Thanks.

Cordially,
CN

[David Given]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

CN wrote:
[...]
> 35W!  Wow, that is an hog energy compared to a slug at 6W with a network drive
> :)  No wonder, the reports, the plug has been running rather hot.

Actually, that's the consumption for the entire stack --- the SheevaPlug
itself is using 5W or so. That includes two USB hard drives, a powered
USB hub, an ADSL modem and a WRT54GL. The SheevaPlug itself uses about
half the power of an NSLU2 (although this will go up if you add lots of
USB devices).

> When you added the modules, which stream did you use?  aptware?  Is there an
> easy way for me to look at that stream listing from my slugosbe, to see which
> modules are available and what versions.  Thanks.

I'm not using Optware. This is a pure Debian installation.

- --
┌─── [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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[CN-5]

On Sun, 07 Jun 2009 10:05:14 +0100, David Given wrote:

> Actually, that's the consumption for the entire stack --- the SheevaPlug
> itself is using 5W or so. That includes two USB hard drives, a powered
> USB hub, an ADSL modem and a WRT54GL. The SheevaPlug itself uses about
> half the power of an NSLU2 (although this will go up if you add lots of
> USB devices).

David, That is good to know.  But the 5w (that you say) as the pwr of
SheevaPlug is definitely not half that of the Slug.  Long time ago I had precisely
measured the power usage and listed here.  Even though the pwr supply is rated
at 5v, 2amp that is (almost) enough to supply two attached notebook drives.  If I
remember correctly, the slug itself takes only about 2 or 3 watts.

[David Given]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

CN wrote:
[...]
> David, That is good to know.  But the 5w (that you say) as the pwr of
> SheevaPlug is definitely not half that of the Slug.  Long time ago I had precisely
> measured the power usage and listed here.  Even though the pwr supply is rated
> at 5v, 2amp that is (almost) enough to supply two attached notebook drives.  If I
> remember correctly, the slug itself takes only about 2 or 3 watts.

I got my numbers from here:

http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/HowTo/OverClockTheSlug

...although cross referencing elsewhere shows that they're probably
wrong. Go wiki!

Oh, yes, one other thing where the SheevaPlug wins is that it has proper
USB power circuitry: you can plug high-load devices into it and they'll
actually run, without any of the weird brownouts the NSLU2 is prone to.
One day I'd like to meet whichever designer at Linksys thought that
would be a good idea...

(In fact, you can take the lid off the SheevaPlug and you end up with a
mini 5V switch mode supply in one hand and the computer in the other.
It's *ideal* for running off batteries.)

- --
┌─── [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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