[Lancaster] pet slug

[andy baxter]

Martyn Welch wrote:
> andy baxter wrote:
>   
>> Hi all,
>>
>> Last week I bought a 'slug' (linksys NSLU2 ethernet appliance) on eBay. 
>> It's just arrived in the post today. It's a tiny thing, about the size 
>> of my hand, with 2 usb2 ports and an ethernet port on the back, and a 
>> 233 MHz ARM processor inside. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSLU2 .
>>
>> It's meant for plugging usb hard drives into - you can plug in 2 drives 
>> and they come up as windows network shares. I've tested it like this, 
>> and it seems pretty good - fast enough to stream video over the network. 
>> But the important point is its based on linux, and is reflashable, so 
>> you can put pretty much anything you like on it. I'm looking forward to 
>> putting debian on it and setting it up as a home web server and whatever 
>> else I can think of. Being silent and low power, I'm happy leaving it 
>> switched on all the time in my flat, which I wasn't with the old, rather 
>> noisy, machine I had before.
>>
>>     
>
> Hi Andy,
>
> I'd suggest giving Debian a miss, instead take a look at OpenEmbedded. 
> It's a system for cross-compiling minimal Linux images. At an educated 
> guess, the slug has a minimal amount of Flash for the root file system 
> and minimal RAM. I'm not sure you will have a lot of luck with Debian, 
> though I understand that there is an Embedded Debian project.
>   

OK, thanks - I'll have a look at it. The Slug Wiki does mention debian 
as something people have managed to install though. I think that when 
you do this, most of the system goes on the hard disk, with only a 
minimal boot system on the internal flash drive. The Slug has 32Mb RAM, 
which isn't so bad - the same as the old server I had running up till 
about a year ago as a web server in my flat.

andy