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Linux In A Box

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the little-is-better dept.

Henrik pointed us to the Linux in a Box project, which is a bitchin' little project to create an inexpensive little Linux box: it boots a 2.0.36 kernel from a ramdisk, and it's pingable and Telenetable, as well as being usable as a Web server. Only for the brave of heart and willing to hack.

14 of 73 comments (clear)

  1. What about the children? by freebe · · Score: 5
    a bitchin' little project

    Please stop using these nasty words on Slashdot. Sites like this that are child-accessible should know to restrain their content in the face of pending laws. How many times does it need to be told to people that content that is offensive to children needs to be kept away from them?

    it boots a 2.0.36 kernel

    On top of that, you go and influence these poor suggestable little children with thoughts of running an outdated kernel that is simply a security hole! How do you even dare? Would you allow your children to use NT3.5? Would you allow them to use an outdated kernel? Think, Taco, what about the children?

    it's pingable and Telenetable, as well as being usable as a Web server. Only for the brave of heart and willing to hack.

    I think you meant willing to be hacked. Once again, what about the children? Would you let your child use telnet? Why suggest it to the children on Slashdot? You should know better than that. As a maintainer of a website like this, you have a responsibility to not influence suggestible little children with Nazi ideas such as running Telnet on a computer.

    --

    Free BeOS, runs from a Linux partition

  2. Slashdotted!! by grahamsz · · Score: 4

    That'll teach them to run a webserver from an embedded processor!

    I guess its the sort of webserver i'd like to have on my toaster so I didn't have to get up to check how brown my toast was but i'd like to think my toaster would be exempt from /. ing.

  3. why would I need one by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3
    when in a few months I can get BSD In A Box instead?

    Prettier box too.

  4. Linux in a wristwatch by IBM by Kakurenbo+Shogun · · Score: 3

    Here is a story on Yahoo's daily news about IBM prototyping a wristwatch running Linux. It uses some wireless technology to communicate with other computers (no, there's not a dinky little 101 key keyboard with keys so small that philosophers can argue about how many angels can dance on them). The article says they're not planning on commecializing it though...

    --
    Convert RSS to HTML - integrate webfeeds into your website
  5. Supercheap Linux system w/firewall by www.sorehands.com · · Score: 5
    Why bother with a special embedded system? If you are looking for a cheap system, why not take an old 386 system/paperweight and setup the Floppy Firewall?

    This is a simple distro (free!) that gets you up and running on a low-end system w/o a hard drive.

    Get your Floppy Firewall at http://www.zelow.no/floppyfw.

    If it don't have what you want, you can always add more. But, if you add too much, you might have to add a hard drive.

    --
    Fight Spammers!
    1. Re:Supercheap Linux system w/firewall by Scurra+UK · · Score: 3

      If all you want is a small box to connect you to the net I can't reccomend Freesco enough (it's nothing to do with SCO)
      <p>It's so easy to set up that someone who'd never heard of UNIX can do it, and it's a dead reliable way of connecting your home/small office network or whatever to the net, AND it all fits on a floppy. Been connecting our house for about a year now, the only time it's gone down is when the floppy drive in our aging 486 broke.

  6. Linux in a box? by Segfault+11 · · Score: 4
    Woohoo! I've always wanted to have Linux in a box. Up until now, it has been stuck inside a bottle on my desktop.

    Oh wait -- does anyone remember this Linux server in a box? You also might be able to get Linux in a box at this site.

    Be sure to check out:

    There are simply not enough things that come in boxes. Just think how shameful it is for all that fruit to be sitting out there naked in the produce section at the grocery store...

    --

    I registered my hate for Jon Katz

  7. Here's a better cache. by vattervi · · Score: 3
    The Linux in a Box project has been around for a long time. The new release is version 3, but there is quite a bit of information cached about version 2. The main differences between version 2 and version 3 seem to be that version 3 uses 10-BaseT (instead of version 2's 10-Base2) ethernet and version 3 has 4 megabytes of flash rom. Below are several Google caches you may find informative:

  8. Dr. Seuss running Linux... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4


    Can you run it on a box?
    And see how fast it overclocks?
    Can you run it on a toaster?
    Or run it on a roller coaster?
    Can you run it on your phone?
    And call your kernel far from home?
    Can you run it on your watch?
    Or pour some hot grits on your crotch?

  9. This is easy! by smurd · · Score: 5
    We have been Shipping PC-104 linux boxes for the past 2 years. All it took was a Slackware rescue floppy, a bootdisk and an EPROM burner.

    The procedure for making the EPROMS for the RTD PC-104 card is as follows:

    1. Fire up the card with +5 and 12 volts
    2. Create a freshly formatted floppy with the included Datalight DOS 5.0 on it. I know, it's sad but we had some DOS setup code for the card.
    3. Drop loadlin and the kernal You DID build a baby size kernal for this with initrd right? on the floppy
    4. Create a ramdisk on you development system to build the root image for your new card
    5. umount the ramdisk
    6. Set the ramdisk to zeros with:
      dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ram0 count=4096
    7. Make a filesystem
      mke2fs -vm0 /dev/ram0 4096
    8. Mount the ramdisk and copy your root filesystem in:
      mount -t ext2 /dev/ram0 /mnt
      cp -pxR /projects/snmp/root_fs/* /mnt
    9. unmount it again and squish it down with:
      umount /mnt
      dd if=/dev/ram0 bs=1k count=4096 | gzip -v9 > /projects/snmp/eprom/root_fs.gz
    10. Now, use sneaker net to move the floppy to the DOS machine running the RTD supplied EPROM image maker and tell it to make the entire floppy into an EPROM image .BIN file(s)
    11. Burn the files into EPROM, plug 'em into the card, apply power and open a beer as you watch Linux boot on a 4 inch card
    Have fun.
  10. What we truly need is Linux(tm) in a Lego(tm) by brokeninside · · Score: 3

    Imagine being able to snap together a Beowulf cluster. Run out of disk space, just snap on another RAID brick. Best of all, with the mindstorm attachments, you can watch the system upgrade itself when it needs more resources.

    Just don't let your system have a credit card number or you may find it taking over your apartment today, and the world tomorrow....

  11. Wrong procedure! by Morgaine · · Score: 3

    If you have any intention of selling really lots of those units, you need to change your bootup, loading and configuration procedure rather drastically to:

    STEP 1: Connect unit to LAN through RJ45, apply power.

    STEP 2: Unit discovers all local networking parameters by snooping, configures itself as a webserver on an unused address of the subnet (snoop to see its advertisement), and everything else is configured up through a browser.

    STEP 3: There is no step 3, because *everything* should be programmable in step 2, including uploading kernels to onboard flash.

    Yes, I know that the reason PC-104 cards tend to be as dumb and old-fashioned as they were 5 years ago is because in theory every extra facility adds a fractional cost to the product, but I can't help feel that the accountants aren't factoring in the cost of people's time, nor the likelihood of increased sales if the item is massively easy to use.

    --
    "The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
  12. Linux In A Box, from the creator! by midiliab · · Score: 4
    Dear Linux Fellows

    I, Mikael Dich, the designer of the Linux In A Box microprocessor board, is pleased that the LIAB project has come up on www.slashdot.com! http://www.liab.dk has broken down due to the heavy load, so here is a little information:

    The board uses i386EX at 25 MHz, 4 Mbyte of FLASH, up to 64 Mbyte of DRAM (72 pin), 10BASE-T, runs on 9-24V DC or AC, 8 watt, 150 grams, 4*6 inches.

    I am cofounder of the company "LIAB Electronics I/S" which produces and sells assembled LIAB microprocessor boards. We deliver these boards complete with a CD-ROM, a Users Manual and a Hardware Reference. Price approx. $300. The CD-ROM contains all documentation, including sources for the bootloader, kernel patches, images for an inital ramdisc, schematics and plot files for the PCB. This documentation is free and everybody is free to manufacture their own LIABs. You may change the design and use it as you want. You may download pdf versions of the (draft) Users Manual and Hardware Reference on http://www.liab.dk

    The LIAB board now runs both version 2.0.36 and 2.2.14 of the Linux kernel. At least ten different extension boards have been designed for the 64 pins I/O connector: a 12 bit A/D card, a relay/optoisolated I/O card, an MP3 player using the STA013 MP3 decoder chip, an IDE harddisk interface, an HPIB interface and a floppy interface. We are working on an simple USB host interface these days. The board is considere ideal for educational purposes.

    Mikael Dich, midi@www.liab.dk

  13. Floppies are unrealiable by DreamerFi · · Score: 3

    That's why I made a free firewall that runs off hard disk - sure, it can be done from floppy, but I consider them too failure prone...

    -John