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Full Debian ARM for Under $200

Posted by timothy on from the neato-keen dept.

An anonymous reader writes "With minor elbow grease, you can now set yourself up with a complete Debian ARM Linux box for under $200. This is thanks to Peter Korsgaard, who figured out a cool byteswapped kernel hack for the little $99 Linksys NSLU2. Add a $99 USB harddrive, and the tiny, cute, quiet 'Slug' can run any of about 16,000 Debian ARM packages, 24x7, for pennies per month worth of electricity, since ARM is still orders of magnitude more power-efficient than anything x86. Serve files, music, web pages, printers, backups, kernel images, webcams/motion detection, firewalls/routers, wireless access point... or whatever. Oh, did I mention you can overclock the Slug?"

14 of 233 comments (clear)

  1. Already hacked by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Linksys NSLU2 has already been hacked so you can run your own applications on it. :-)

    1. Re:Already hacked by jaylee7877 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Yes but having it run Debian opens up a huge number of precompiled applicatons to the NSLU2.

  2. Fans of this should check out openwrt.org by kaldek · · Score: 5, Informative

    OpenWRT is a similar thing for the Linksys WRT54G and GS wireless routers. Same goes for the Asus WL500 series. Linux forever! heh

    1. Re:Fans of this should check out openwrt.org by raz0 · · Score: 3, Informative

      You can't, however, attach a HDD to the WRT54G(S). I've just ordered myself an Asus WL-500g Deluxe with two USB 2.0 ports. Should be nice for a little web server with OpenWRT, though the performance should be poor. 1.3Mbytes/s I've heard. I guess this Linksys device has better USB performance, it being meant for file sharing, though it's not a guarantee. The WL-HDD (connects a regular IDE HDD) can only transfer 2Mbytes/s.

  3. Getting there, but not yet perfect by glowworm · · Score: 3, Informative

    This is a cool project and Kudos to Linksys for using Linux as a basis for their NAS and Routers.

    But TFA says "built-in 10/100 (not yet supported in litte-endian mode)". If I read this correctly the device works, but the network port doesn't. Hopefully someone can correct me and confirm that the ethernet port does work.

    This would be a perfect low-cost always-on media centre server for Slim Devices Squeezebox Server

    --
    Orationem pulchram non habens, scribo ista linea in lingua Latina
    1. Re:Getting there, but not yet perfect by MindNumbingOblivion · · Score: 3, Informative
      The key there is the "not yet supported in little-endian mode" (emphasis mine). Endianness refers to which end of the data the processor starts chewing on first. Big endian means it reads the most significant bit first, little means it starts from the least sig bit.

      ARM processes things in what is known as a byte-sexual method, ie, either big or little endian. What tfa is saying is that eth0 port should work just fine under Debian ARM in big-endian mode (otherwise having this thing set up as a network storage device is pretty useless unless you're planning on exclusively USB hubbing it).

      --
      #define CLUE 0
    2. Re:Getting there, but not yet perfect by damiangerous · · Score: 3, Informative
      What tfa is saying is that eth0 port should work just fine under Debian ARM in big-endian mode

      What it also says is that Debian ARM only supports little endian mode. I closed the page and now I can't get back to it, so I don't recall if he overcame this problem with the ethernet port.

  4. Re:Stereo component by dartboard · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://www.slimdevices.com/

    get of their older devices for cheap on ebay, they rock. i've got 5 of them scattered throughout my house (3 different models, all running off the same server software on my debian box).

  5. Re:Overclock the slug? by jaylee7877 · · Score: 4, Informative

    This is not an overclock. For reasons unknown, Linksys chose to clock the unit at 133mhz. The chip is spec'ed by intel to run at 266mhz w/o cooling. So your not overclocking your un-underclocking :-)

  6. Re:Think again, homies: by pyrrhonist · · Score: 4, Informative
    How are you planning on accessing those files? Hopes and dreams? Network Attached Storage with no Network Attached is just a hard drive.

    If you don't need a distro as large as Debian, you can run Unslung, which does support the built-in Ethernet.

    Unslung uses ipkg for package management and has a simple installation using the native firmware. It is very stable, since it has been available almost since the Linksys product was announced. It is actively being developed and you can talk to the developers via IRC at #nslu2-linux on Freenode.

    There is also a Yahoo group for running Linux on the NSLU2.

    --
    Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
  7. Re:I've been waiting for this! by chrysrobyn · · Score: 3, Informative
    Cheaper, more efficient, faster (Disk I/O wise), more stable, more flexible (apt-get) than the Mac Mini.

    Cheaper? Granted, by at least 5x. More efficient? Less power, certainly, can't attest to what efficiency you're shooting for -- if its CPU cycles per cubic inch, not likely. Faster? If I put an identical IDE drive on a firewire bridge, the MacMini will be faster than some USB implementation.

    Not to mention the ability to hack it when I want (The warranty is already void!).

    Who cares about the warranty when you're doing something like this? With a Mac Mini, you're not voiding the warranty by loading an alternative OS anyway.

    My Linux box is a PowerMac 7600 with a 500MHz G3 upgrade card, running PowerPC Debian. PowerPC doesn't have all the support of the x86 world in Linux (and ARM is even worse), but Debian provides a great platform to provide support for us non-x86 platform users.

  8. If you don't want to mod... by pyrrhonist · · Score: 5, Informative
    To install Debian on the NSLU2, you'll need to do a serial port modification. If you aren't comfortable with modifying your NSLU2, than I suggest running Unslung.

    Unslung can be installed without using a serial port modification, because it simply uses the built-in Linksys web administration to upgrade the firmware to the Unslung distribution.

    Once Unslung is installed, it only takes a matter of minutes to have your NSLU2 running Samba, OpenSSH, Apache, Slimserver, and even Asterisk!

    --
    Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
  9. Re:Read Slashdot post, Read TFA, Order NSLU2. 5 Mi by pyrrhonist · · Score: 3, Informative
    I want to make this a PBX using Asterisk.

    I've tried (Asterisk is already ported for Unslung). Unfortunately, the NSLU2 just isn't powerful enough for that.
    You can get one side of a conversation at most, and it's really jittery.

    Try it out anyway - it's an easy install with Unslung!

    --
    Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
  10. Limited memory :-( by Mark+Gillespie · · Score: 4, Informative

    The crippling factor on the NSLU2 is the limited memory. Fine for what it's intended to do, but they to expand it's capabilities, and you hit the wall. Many people have this problem when trying to use it as a UPnP Mediaserver (using Twonkyvision). The hardware is simply not powerfull enough, or enough memory to cope with large scale media databases and heavy network media streaming.