Linux In A Box

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.

Comments

What about the children?

[freebe]

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On top of that, you go and influence these poor suggestable little children with thoughts of running an outdated kernel that is simply a security hole!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 Would you allow them to use an outdated kernel?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.

Slashdotted!!

[grahamsz]

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.

Supercheap Linux system w/firewall

[www.sorehands.com]

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.

Linux in a box?

[Segfault 11]

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:

• Baby Shower in a box
• NT cluster in a box
• Theme Parties in a box

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...

Dr. Seuss running Linux...

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

This is easy!

[smurd]

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.

Linux In A Box, from the creator!

[midiliab]

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