Debian on the NSLU2
I recently bought a NSLU2 featuring 1x ethernet port and 2x USB 2.0 ports – available for about 80 euro. My plan is to integrate the device in my network as backup system. The original firmware might be nice for John Doe User but I’d like to use Debian featuring stuff like rsync, dirvish,… on it. Thanks to current d-i and Martin Michlmayr’s webpage Debian on NSLU2 that’s pretty easy. I’m using a 1GB usb pen for the Debian system itself and an external usb disk as backup medium. JFTR some notes…
First of all get the firmware from slug-firmware.net, chose the ‘Debian/NSLU2 (debian-installer)’ version (debian-etch-rc1-20061102.zip, md5: de3821ee5d80d87541abdb47f5eae085). As described on Martins webpage go either to the firmware upgrade dialog within the webinterface or use upslug2. Using the webinterface I had to plug in the usb pen in port ‘disk 2’, otherwise upgrading the firmware fails with ‘not enough free memory’.
After firmware upgrade has finished and the box finished rebooting just ssh to the box (use an utf8-enabled terminal) and d-i starts up. I changed the network setup from static IP (192.168.1.77 by default) to DHCP within d-i and prepared my network setup on my laptop:
# cat /etc/network/interfaces
[...]
iface ap inet static
address 192.168.10.1
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.10.0
broadcast 192.168.10.255
[...]
# ifup b44=ap ; Start dnsmasq ; grml-router start
# ip route add 192.168.10.188 via 192.168.10.1
That’s it. Just ssh to the box again (‘uxterm -e ssh installer@192.168.10.188’) and continue the installation straight forward.
mika@NSLU:~$ uname -a Linux NSLU 2.6.18-3-ixp4xx #1 Tue Dec 5 16:52:07 UTC 2006 armv5tel GNU/Linux mika@NSLU:~$ cat /proc/cpuinfo Processor : XScale-IXP42x Family rev 1 (v5l) BogoMIPS : 266.24 Features : swp half fastmult edsp CPU implementer : 0x69 CPU architecture: 5TE CPU variant : 0x0 CPU part : 0x41f CPU revision : 1 Cache type : undefined 5 Cache clean : undefined 5 Cache lockdown : undefined 5 Cache format : Harvard I size : 32768 I assoc : 32 I line length : 32 I sets : 32 D size : 32768 D assoc : 32 D line length : 32 D sets : 32 Hardware : Linksys NSLU2 Revision : 0000 Serial : 0000000000000000 mika@NSLU:~$ mount /dev/sda1 on / type ext3 (rw,noatime,errors=remount-ro) tmpfs on /lib/init/rw type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755) proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev) sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev) procbususb on /proc/bus/usb type usbfs (rw) udev on /dev type tmpfs (rw,mode=0755) tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev) devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=620) mika@NSLU:~$ df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda1 773M 399M 335M 55% / tmpfs 15M 0 15M 0% /lib/init/rw udev 10M 32K 10M 1% /dev tmpfs 15M 0 15M 0% /dev/shm mika@NSLU:~$
That’s it. :-)