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USB-Powered Linux Server Fits in Your Pocket

Posted by timothy on from the sounds-like-a-cool-toy dept.

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."

10 of 252 comments (clear)

  1. It's not SCO but... by MULTICS_$MAN · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  2. Correction to article by dysk · · Score: 5, Informative
    It actually has very little to do with being seen as a CD-ROM drive by the desktop.
    To access and use your BlackDog, you merely plug it in to your host computer's USB port* and BlackDog takes over! Your host machine's monitor, keyboard, mouse, and Internet connection are taken over by BlackDog for the duration of your session, when you are done, you simply remove BlackDog and everything on the host is returned to its original state.
    1. Re:Correction to article by kvigor · · Score: 4, Informative

      The device is seen as *both* a CD-ROM and a network device. As the parent suggested, the CD-ROM is used to launch an X server on the host [1] and the network interface is used to allow that X server to communicate to the applications running on the device.

      (disclaimer: I am an employee of Realm Systems but do not speak for the company)

      [1] obviously useful only for Windows hosts, since Linux hosts will almost always have an X server running already.

    2. Re:Correction to article by kvigor · · Score: 3, Informative

      It certainly can use autorun on Windows, which is very convenient and is a primary reason for using a CD-ROM interface. But the CD image is a .ISO file served off the device's flash, which means it can contain anything. As we ship it, it has an AUTORUN.INF and an X server and some handy networking tools. But it's trivial to change the CD image to hold whatever you may want.

      This is an incredibly flexible device. You can change almost anything about it. Heck, if you're up to hacking kernel drivers, you can make it emulate ANY USB device. Thus far, we've had call for emulating CD-ROM and ethernet-over-USB. But there's no reason it can't appear to the host as a mass storage device. Or a keyboard (take *that*, keyloggers!). Or a serial port dongle. Or... anything USB at all.

      None of this flexibility, alas, will make any Linux distro in the world dumb enough to autorun software just because somebody presented a CD-ROM, unlike another certain popular OS. So autorunning on a Linux host requires a hotplug script be installed. We provide samples for some major distros and assume that the guy running Gentoo is smart enough to hack his own hotplug (or just run a .SH off the CD-ROM image).

      OS-X support is "coming soon", i.e. we plan to support it, have done nothing to prevent it working, but haven't yet spent any test cycles on it. Having got it working with the incredibly balky USB stacks in Windows and Linux, I have no doubt it will be made to work just fine.

      (again, *not* an official spokesman for the company, not legally binding, don't sue me please, yadda yadda.)

  3. Re:Wait wait wait... by Klivian · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  4. Re:What? by stox · · Score: 3, Informative

    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. "
  5. Link by luiss · · Score: 3, Informative

    http://www.projectblackdog.com/site/index.html

  6. Re:Michael Anderer and Realm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative
    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.

  7. Re:Surprising by kvigor · · Score: 3, Informative

    The device currently consumes ~300 milliwatts max and is barely warm to the touch. Naturally it consumes far less when idle.

  8. Re:Cool Alarm by kvigor · · Score: 3, Informative

    Ethernet would have made this an instant sale for me. I could develop and demo network appliance products on the road without virtual machines. Without Ethernet, this is just a really portable terminal to me.


    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.