Slashdot Mirror
NSLU2 Now More Useful
NSLUG writes "The WRT54G's not the only hackable kid on the block. Linksys has a new device out. The NSLU2 is a tiny network storage device running Linux and it's been hacked to add SSH, NFS, an iTunes server, etc. Tom's Hardware is running a series of articles on how to hack the NSLU2. The first article is here
and the second is here. Check out this page for details on getting into the box."
The WRT54G is a superb router - it's product's like this which made Cisco by them out because they were starting to verge on their low end devices which cost 10x as much.
Of course, no-one got fired for buying Cisco but I'm sure we will see a hell of a lot more of these sorta devices at remote sites and for 'glue'.
IntechHosting - Free domain, 2GB, PHP, £4.95/$8.95
How about someone installing ClamAV on this puppy? Have it auto-scan the HD every so often and keep your NAS nice and virus-clean!
Full-Featured GPL Web Hosting Control Panel
Well, get a USB flatbed scanner with GPL drivers and you can have a network attached scanner. Come to think of it, there are probably lots of USB devices that one could share with this box. It could even do wiring closet security monitoring with a USB webcam and a remote machine which analyzes the images for movement. The possibilities appear endless (provided working drivers can be obtained and installed on the box).
Full-Featured GPL Web Hosting Control Panel
What's the real-world performance on this kind of device like? And why is it limited to two USB devices (other than the obvious fact that there are only two USB ports on the thing)? I'm considering one simply as a network backup device.
well done
Ten Mil. Never thought I'd see the day.
Alison
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
+3 Interesting?
Moderators: He did not SAY anything. "Wow, that's cool! It's linux!" is not interesting.
How about using those mod points on posts by people actually giving new information or writing intelligent posts?
Well, to make it easier for whoever's ordering the shirt, he is an admin.. =)
- low power... makes the box silent, and the power-supply is simpler/cooler and likely to have a longer life
- simpler software... unlike an old box that potentially has a ton of different things running on it, this has a smaller set of very stable software that's likely to continue working forever
- easy backup/restore... the ROM image is 16MB, so it's something you can put a copy on all of your computers, and is trivial to restore. Whereas if your random machine lost its installation, how long would it take to do a re-install?
- it's small and cheap... yes, spare computers are cheaper, but whereas it's feasible to maintain and store 25 NSLU2's in my computer room, the same is not true of spare boxes... it'd be too noisy and much less stable.
Where we're going with this is having separate hardware to do each little network task. Since they're all running on separate CPU's, if one of them does die, the other ones will be fine, and will likely continue running for a long time.- audio output/video playback (one per room)
- firewall/NAT/WiFi
- DMZ services
- apache
- sendmail
- network attached storage
- backup/restore
- X10 network interface
- ...
These are things you simply want to always work, and don't want to screw around too much.Space and spare hardware are issues for me. As a college student living in the dorms, I kindof really have to choose what I bring to school with me. Currently, I bring my WinXP tower for game-playing (and, as of now, mass-storage), my PowerBook, and an old school ThinkPad 600E as a network appliance linux utility. Say I need more storage, I'd have trouble finding space for another box between everything else (UPS, tower, storage for books, etc). Also, my complete-computer boxes often find their way into the hands of my friends, who are computationally less fortunate, so I don't always have spare hardware to run such an appliance from. Sure, there's the ThinkPad, but it lives in a ventilated drawer, for the most part, firewalling, scanning the network, etc. If I wanted a networkable mass storage device (NAS), this would work great. Further, the disks are reconfigurable. I'm sure you could even make it into an even more reliable solution by integrating mirror-RAID across the two USB disks. Just get two enclosures, two hard disks of the same size, and, presto, mirrored network backup. And a toy, to boot! (Boot. Haha.)
Your point is valid, but, this solution would be great for me.
Informatus Technologicus
There appears to be a fair sized amount of information on how to modify these boxes on various Japanese sites which I can not read a word of. So I have yet to take my LinkStation appart but will hopefully get around to it soon. So far it has worked well and I am pretty happy with my purchase.
Some Slashdot history (thanks to $$$$$exyGal for the informative journal entry...
0 00 0 000 0 000 = 4000000 0 000 0 000 0 000 0 44&cid=8000000 8 &cid=9000000 8 344&cid=10000000
Post #1,000,000 on Jun 15, ???? http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=6038&cid=1000
Post #2,000,000 on Mar 1, ???? http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=16359&cid=200
Post #3,000,000 on Feb 13, ???? http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=27908&cid=300
Post #4,000,000 on Aug 2, 2001 http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=37241&cid
Post #5,000,000 on Jan 2, 2002 http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=49501&cid=500
Post #6,000,000 on May 20, 2003 http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=64871&cid=600
Post #7,000,000 on Sep 18, 2003 http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=79101&cid=700
Post #8,000,000 on Jan 16, 2004 http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=93
Post #9,000,000 on Apr 28, 2004 http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10569
Post #10,000,000 on Aug 18, 2004 http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11
Unfortunately, I couldn't tell what year the first three were posted, but from 4 million to 10 million, you can see the number of days it takes to post 1,000,000 comments:
4 million to 5 million: 153 days
5 million to 6 million: 138 days
6 million to 7 million: 121 days
7 million to 8 million: 120 days
8 million to 9 million: 102 days
9 million to 10 million: 112 days
First observation: Comment posting is slowing down on Slashdot!!! Slashdot is dying!!! Netcraft confirms it!!! OMGWTFBBQ!!!
(end troll mode)
Second observation: At the current rate of posting, it will take us 3 years to post 10 million more comments, or about 27 years to get to 100 million. So you can reschedule the celebration from 2525 to 2031, if not sooner.
Hear recorded Slashdot headlines on your phone! New service beta testing. Just call (248) 434-5508