Slashdot Mirror

i think those have been around for some time http://kurobox.com/

Pardon, Kurobox link fixed here.

I can see tons of uses for such a thing:

- kid's laptop. If it gets trashed, so what?
- LTSP terminal.
- heck, MY laptop. I wouldn't choose to do kernel compilations on any laptop in my price range to begin with, so as long as the OLPC has a browser, an email client, ssh, and WiFi, I'm pretty much done (although I wouldn't turn down an mp3 player). All I really want is that it be light, have a (preferably decent) keyboard, and legible in coffee shops for a couple of hours at a go.
- if it has usb, low power consumption file server. See things like the kurobox, or the guys who are hacking the BuffaloTech stuff. You don't NEED tons of power to torrent or serve files.
- disposable redundant server. Take ten of them, hook them to a load balancer and an NFS, and you've got a (functionally) infinite capacity web server for (basically) the cost of the load balancer and NFS, for which you can make a case anyway. I'm a little surprised somebody hasn't done this already with old Xboxes. In any event, that group that put together that Apple supercomputer proved that you can do things with multiply redundant hardware, and these would be perfect for low level apps.
- Disposable emergency server. Say a hurricane is coming. It would be trivial to set up a databased refugee tracking system for 25 clients on one of these. GPL/BSD/whatever the software, and your app is completely portable for $100 in HW costs.
- Heck, firewalls. Something like this: http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/travelpower/90c6/
- I'm sure people smarter than I can append to this list in a big hurry.

Is it for everyone? No. Would I want to make it my primary computer? No. Would I make it a companion piece to my 4000x1280/1GHz C7/1GB workstation? You betcha.

I just recently bought a Kuro Box for exactly the same reasons - low power, low noise, always on. You can load it up with Gentoo or Debian, so you can do bittorrent, ftp, http, etc. And it's cheap!

The only downside is that it's headless, but for me that wasn't an issue. If that really bugs you, you can set up a vnc server on it and graphically steer it from your PC.

Check out the kuro website. It has links to their wiki and forum.

I just got myself a KuroBox. This is a fantastic little thing. It's a full computer (headless). It's excellent for a home file server or web server. Its decently cheap. You add you own hard drive. If you've done a chroot before, you should have no problem setting it up with you own custom linux. I used debian. But you can use Gentoo or others too.

I use the Kurobox for this. The kurobox is basically a modified version of the Buffalo link station but it is designed to be reloaded with a custom linux. Some pre-configured images are available and include tons of apps for torrent, dyndns, LAMP, e-donkey, samba and all kinds of other stuff. It has a USB port which you could use for another hard drive or USB NIC to turn it into a firewall or router although I'm sure most slashdot readers already have pretty good routers. I think linksys made a hackable NAS too but I haven't tried that one.

But nearly twice as much as a KuroBox. Next.

* a web server
* E-mail (SMTP, IMAP) server
* DNS server
* a file server (SMB, AFP) for internal (with a big hard drive)
* ssh access
* complete headless setup and configuration
* very small (Mac mini sized or smaller)
* maybe a print server
* wireless access point
* maybe VPN from the outside, or site-to-site tunnels
* some means to back the whole thing up (easily)

2 suggestions spring to mind - a KuroBox for about $150, or if you'd like it with a drive already installed, a Buffalo Linkstation (newegg link) for just a few buck more. I have a 400GB Gig-E Linkstation that's currently running Debian (took all of 5 minutes to reflash it to deb), and it serves just about every purpose you list above except the WAP... It has 2 USB ports for external storage or printers (hmm, you could probably plug in a usb wifi adapter and get the WAP thing working too), it's very quiet, and is about the size of a mac mini.

Even without the debian re-flash, this box can do a lot of what you list above - it *is* a home server - but apt-get goodness just makes it that much more flexible.

It seems like a full computer would be better than this in just about every aspect--price, power consumption, etc.

I use the Kuro box for my always on bittorrent box. It is very small, cheap and only uses about 40 watts of power.

Practically the same device is marketed as the Buffalo Linkstation.

But I fell in love with something called a Kuro-box. Here's a link, http://kurobox.com/revolution/what.html From the site: The KuroBox is a small-footprint Linux-based embedded platform for a personal server. The current incarnation of the KuroBox, the KuroBox/HG, sports a 266Mhz PowerPC processor, 128MB of RAM, 2 USB 2.0 Ports, and a 10/100/1000Mbit network interface. I got mine off ebay (with a 250 hdd) for ~$200, and I couldnt be happier!

Woud the KuroBox suit your purposes?

Hmm... the Revolution Store and main web site appear to be undergoing some sort of maintenance at the moment, but the wiki is still online...

I originally saw this on robots,net, but it looks like it might suit your needs...

Woud the KuroBox suit your purposes?

Hmm... the Revolution Store and main web site appear to be undergoing some sort of maintenance at the moment, but the wiki is still online...

I originally saw this on robots,net, but it looks like it might suit your needs...

Kuro box http://www.kurobox.com/ - $160. Except it can only house 1 3.5" drive.

The Kuro Box is a NAS-ish appliance with a PPC processor and an internal HD. A Gentoo port is available (currently in beta).

The Kuro Box is a NAS-ish appliance with a PPC processor and an internal HD. A Gentoo port is available (currently in beta).

I forgot the low-end options for the post apple-intel-switchers

You can get a KuroBox for US$160

http://penguinppc.org/embedded/kuro/
http://www.kurobox.com/

Or look for a cheap PPC based Wireless Basestation/DSL Router. I know early Nokia ones were PPC based.

Jeez, if you want a microserver, check out a kurobox... it uses Linux. Or maybe go and mod a Linksys NSLU2. Both of these products are $185, and come with NAS/light server profile software already, and are hackable.