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USB-Powered Linux Server Fits in Your Pocket
McSpew writes "A small company from Utah (no, not that one) has announced the BlackDog USB-powered Linux server. It includes a fingerprint reader, a 400MHz PowerPC, 64MB of DRAM and 256MB or 512MB of flash and it runs Debian. The host PC sees it as a CD-ROM drive."
It does co-star Darl's old IKON buddy and "Haloween memo" author Mike Anderer. There must be SCO IP in that, burn it. Oh, nevermind their "server" (you call THAT a server) just melted down anyway.
No, since none or nearly none BIOS versions can boot from a USB storage device. It's used to boot a PC in server configuration, using the Debian on the USB device. No OS are needed on the machine which it is plugged in, so there is no OS suposed to be running an able to mount it.
It's seen as a CD ROM drive? Why? How does that even make sense? It's USB; shouldn't it mount through the OS's USB subsystems as a removable USB storage device?
My guess is that they have the USB info set so it will be recognized as a USB CD-ROM drive and so they can use Auto-start, if it's enabled, to run their software atomatically.
What little I can gleam from the site tells me that it's the front-end for a bunch of webapps or something to allow you to work with a remote desktop on any web connection.
But that's just a guess since the site is now hosed...
"Bah!" - Dogbert
"I wonder how much heat this thing disipates, as my IBook2 dual usb (500 mhz) PPC can get quite hot."
A USB port (on a motherboard) is only specified to deliver 0.2A of current; so @5V that is only 1W.
The PPC in that thing is designed for embedded applications. It has no Altivec, and probably has a lot fewer IPC than the PPC than your iBook. Therefore it makes a lot less heat.
Fran
Because when you unplug it no one can leave you voicemail.
Quite a bit could be served off such a platform. The first website I administered ran off a 50MHz Sparc with 64MB of memory. Static content would not be a problem at all. I'm afraid java would be out of the question, though. ;->
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
http://www.projectblackdog.com/site/index.html
Realm Systems has secured an additional $9 million dollars in funding on July 7, 2005.
The paper SEC filing, describing the new funding has been secured by penguinistas, and is available at : Debt and bridge financing
$7.5 MM came from a single unnamed individual.
Frank Artale, an ex-M$FT VP for NT, was appointed chairman of the board of Realm in January, 2005 , when Realm had secured a previous $8 million dollar investment.
Frank Artale and Michael Anderer's stories first become entertwined over Entirenet. Entirenet is a Redmond and Bellevue, Washington based Windows documentation company. Anderer served as nominal CEO of Entirenet in the 2001- 2003 timeframe. Artale, then serving as Veritas VP for Windows had purchased Entirenet for Veritas in March 2001 for an undisclosed ammount.
Anderer, acting as CEO of Entirenet, announced the acquisition of the South Carolina M$FT training firm, HunterStone, in November, 2002.
Artale had left Veritas by March 2003 when his next venture "Consera Software" was announced. Consera had venture funding provided by Ignition Partners, a Seattle venture outfit staffed with a prominent group of ex-M$FT VP's, including Cameron Myhrvold. Myhrvold has especially close ties to Artale.
Anderer left Entirenet about this time.
Frank Artale has continued to work with Ignition Partners. He was appointed Chairman of the Board of Rendition Networks in Sept 2004, as part of a $6 million dollar Ignition investment. Rendition was quickly sold in Dec, 2004.
Other Artale ventures include Therion, sold in May 2005. He has recently added to the Kenai Software board in July 2005 Kenai's executives, e.g. David Mock and Byrren Yates (CFO) overlap Realm's executives and public investors. Artale is considered an expert on the profitable exit sale of start ups. Other Frank Artale endeavors include advisory roles at Zenprise, Centrify, Accel Partners, and formerly a board position at Level 8.
Michael Anderer's continuing relationship with the Seattle-area venture capital organized by highly placed ex-M$FT VP's indicates his reputation has survived the Halloween memo release.
Why would anyone really need a pocket-sized server in their pocket anyways? People are just throwing new, pointless, mini-sized devices out everyday these days....
...) / Mac / whatever for a screen, keyboard, and network connection.
The idea is that you carry your computer around with you, session and all. You can use any PC (with Windows, Linux, BSD,
Be in the middle of a session at work. Unplug it, go home, plug it in. You're right back in your session. Unplug, go to class, plug in, ditto. Unplug, go to library, plug in. Unplug, go to iternet cafe, plug in. Unplug, go to China, plug in...
If you were editing a document it's ready for the next keystroke. If you were reading mail you're still in the mail reader, still looking at the same letter at the same point in the scroll buffer. If you were browsing the web you are still on the same page with the same brower history. And so on. Your files came with you. Your state came with you. Your whole computer came with you - or at least the parts of it that are important for preserving your state. Screen, keyboard, mouse, video card, internet connection - use whatever is handy. They're heavy. They'll work just fine for this service for several generations after the machine they are attached to went obsolete. Why buy new ones? Why tie yourself to a particular one at a particular site?
Pull it out, it senses the loss of connection and saves anything still in RAM to a non-volatile memory (flash or disk if they can get it) before it runs out of the power in the onboard capacitor. Plug it in and it boots up, recovers state, and sweet-talks the new machine into giving it a full-screen window and the use of keyboard, mouse, and comm stack.
The designers brought this out for licensing to manufacturers (using a slightly-hacked BSD onboard) over a year ago. I saw their booth at Supercom in Las Vegas back then. (Target was to make the small config for under $100 in bulk for schoolkids, maybe $200 in a big one with postage-stamp hard drive for the rest of us.) It's nice to see a version finally on the market - and with Linux yet.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The device currently consumes ~300 milliwatts max and is barely warm to the touch. Naturally it consumes far less when idle.
Despite the summary claiming the device appears as a CD-ROM, it also appears to the host as a network device (masquerading as a ethernet-over-USB dongle). Sounds to me like it might be downright handy for your application.
I don't think I'd give any money to these folks. http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode=display&si d=20050808123259231&title=Anderer's+Realm+raises+a +fresh+%249+million&type=article&order=&hideanonym ous=0&pid=347656#c347665
http://www.groklaw.net/search.php?query=Mike+Ander er&keyType=phrase&datestart=&dateend=&topic=0&type =all&author=0&mode=search
Mod up parent please.
Or i'll do one better, repeat the whole post here:
Cut from an AC post:
Michael E. Anderer, of the SCOX "Halloween" memo fame is the CTO of Realm Systems. His old homepage "S2 consulting" hosted the developer forum for Realm. A number of other M$FT links raise the disturbing question if this product is real or elaborate "opposition" research on the part of Redmond.
Realm Systems has secured an additional $9 million dollars in funding on July 7, 2005.
The paper SEC filing, describing the new funding has been secured by penguinistas, and is available at : Debt and bridge financing
$7.5 MM came from a single unnamed individual.
Frank Artale, an ex-M$FT VP for NT, was appointed chairman of the board of Realm in January, 2005 , when Realm had secured a previous $8 million dollar investment.
Frank Artale and Michael Anderer's stories first become entertwined over Entirenet. Entirenet is a Redmond and Bellevue, Washington based Windows documentation company. Anderer served as nominal CEO of Entirenet in the 2001- 2003 timeframe. Artale, then serving as Veritas VP for Windows had purchased Entirenet for Veritas in March 2001 for an undisclosed ammount.
Anderer, acting as CEO of Entirenet, announced the acquisition of the South Carolina M$FT training firm, HunterStone, in November, 2002.
Artale had left Veritas by March 2003 when his next venture "Consera Software" was announced. Consera had venture funding provided by Ignition Partners, a Seattle venture outfit staffed with a prominent group of ex-M$FT VP's, including Cameron Myhrvold. Myhrvold has especially close ties to Artale.
Anderer left Entirenet about this time.
Frank Artale has continued to work with Ignition Partners. He was appointed Chairman of the Board of Rendition Networks in Sept 2004, as part of a $6 million dollar Ignition investment. Rendition was quickly sold in Dec, 2004.
Other Artale ventures include Therion, sold in May 2005. He has recently added to the Kenai Software board in July 2005 Kenai's executives, e.g. David Mock and Byrren Yates (CFO) overlap Realm's executives and public investors. Artale is considered an expert on the profitable exit sale of start ups. Other Frank Artale endeavors include advisory roles at Zenprise, Centrify, Accel Partners, and formerly a board position at Level 8.
Michael Anderer's continuing relationship with the Seattle-area venture capital organized by highly placed ex-M$FT VP's indicates his reputation has survived the Halloween memo release.
-- Another senseless waste of fine bytes.
It does show up as a network device, actual a USB ethernet NIC for which the PC already has drivers. When the PC brings up the interface it finds what it thinks is a network with another machine on it but actually its just BlackDog.
This is of course after getting control of the PC using the CDROM and autorun and deploying the X server and the user space NAT to give the device access to the networks that the PC can see.
It and the PC are then peers on their own IP routed ethernet over USB network. No need for silly FAT32. It uses Samba to export whatever you like to the PC.
It could also deploy VNC or any other terminal client if you like, but X11 is most direct. The apps themselves can be the ones it's running or ones that it automatically connects through to in the back.
It can open an IPsec VPN session that only it sees, the host PC only routing the traffic, but not able to interpret it. It can then get access to back-end services without exposing them to the PC's vulnerabilities.
It launches an X11 server on the host and it runs the X clients on it own CPU. It communicates as a peer on a IP routed ethernet over USB network.
It can be used to provide the authentication tokens and connect to back end terminal servers (of any odd type).