Anyone running Debian on a Linksys NSLU2?

[23meg]

The NSLU2 is a NAS (network attached storage) interface for USB disks. It's actually a minuscule computer that runs on an ARM-compatible 266MHz Intel processor, and has 32MB of RAM.

The nice thing is: it can do way more than make disks available on a network, because it can run Debian. Since it has very low power consumption and is fanless, it's optimal for tasks that require little computing power, but need the computer to be on all the time.

It's cheap, so I'm planning to get at least one, to use as a web server and torrent machine. Anyone with experiences to share?

[23meg]

Nobody?

[smartboyathome]

I had never heard about that before, but this could definately help me since my server died recently and I am having to use my friend's server for now.

[dreyergustav]

I have a slug running Debian Etch and are very pleased with it. I'm using it to to share files using NFS and Samba. As you said it doesn't use much power (I think about 5 watt) which is nice when you live in Denmark where electricity is very expensive .

If you are thinking about getting one I would recommend that you run your root file system and swap off a flash drive and keep larger files on an attached hard drive. This way the hard drive will only be active when you need the files.

[smartboyathome]

If you are thinking about getting one I would recommend that you run your root file system and swap off a flash drive and keep larger files on an attached hard drive. This way the hard drive will only be active when you need the files.

That I can already do, since I have a spare one I can use.

[armalite]

Me too I have a NSLU2 with debian stable (etch?), I tried some things with this little "pc".

I have bought it last summer to test it, my idea was to set a backup box in case the primary home server goes offline for whatever reason. I used until october 2007, after that i gone busy with other projects and had no time to give to my little nslu2.

So I installed in there apache, php, lighttpd, mysql, dhcpd, radius, courier suite, openvpn, powerdns and heartbeat.

From my experience with nlsu2 i can say this:
- heartbeat v2 isn't well supported, at least until version 2.0.7 (the last i tried). It caused memory leaks and put the slug to overload till no usability. I had to use only heartbeat v1. Maybe with hb 2.1.x problems could be resolved, i don't know;

- mysql is very slow, it really can't be used apart simple (very simple) queries;

- that said, a Joomla website over apache+mysql+php takes forever to load a page. If you put static pages, it works quite well given the cpu power. I installed some php accelerators but no change in speed. This let me think that mysql is the bottleneck in this setup;

- lighttpd is really faster than apache on nslu2, so if you have to use a web server, lighttpd should be your preferred choice;

- courier smtp/pop/imap works good, and it has also a web frontend. nslu2 as a little mail server is a nice thing;

- speed transfer via ftp/samba/scp isn't very speedy on nslu2. Expect to have 2000Kbytes/s;

- dhcp, freeradius and also powerdns (with mysql backend, which is weird, i know) work good, at least in little environments like could be a "normal" home;

- LVM, raid works out of the box, and so reiserfs. However, be aware not to use chmod/chgrp/chown on large directories because it will overload the nslu2 till manual reboot. You can attach as many disks as you want, in /etc/fstab use UUID to let partitions be recognized correctly;

- I bought also a little usb phidget to watchdog (read: reboot) the dlink router when it hangs and i wrote a little c code. I used the original phidget libraries and it worked as intended.

Anyway I'm satisfied with what the nslu2 can do. Since it is ARM based, don't expect to have every application found on i386 (i miss ebox for nslu2!).

Power consumption is really low, maybe a Soekris board suits best some network needs, but AFAIK nslu2 setup is way easier than soekris board.

[AndyCooll]

I recently bought one of these with the intention of installing Debian on it. Unfortunately a Debian kernel update broke the NSLU2 Debian Installer, and at the time it didn't seem as if this had been fixed.

And I haven't had the time to attempt to manual install Debian. So mine is still sitting around at the moment doing very little. However as a result of this thread perhaps I'll have another go over the Christmas break.

[AndyCooll]

It seems the new Debian installer is available.

So I've downloaded it and tried flashing my slug with it. However I'm not getting very far. I've tried this using both the original Linksys web app and Upslug2) . It seems to work, no errors are reported. It then reboots, I attach my USB HDD ...and wait ...and wait ...a couple of hours etc

It goes no further, I'm left with an orange "Ready/Status" light, a green "Ethernet" light, and no lights against the disks. And when I try SSH'ing into it I get the error message "ssh: connect to host 192.168.0.3 port 22: No route to host". 192.168.0.3 is the static IP address I gave it. And it hasn't got the default IP address because that doesn't report back anything at all.

I know it's possible for these methods to work, I've successfully used both of them to upgrade the original firmware.

So where am I going wrong? What else might I try doing to get Debian on it? I'm thinking I might have to try manually installing Debian on it, however before I resort to that I thought I should seek some ideas from you lot first.

[popch]

I(...) when I try SSH'ing into it I get the error message "ssh: connect to host 192.168.0.3 port 22: No route to host". 192.168.0.3 is the static IP address I gave it. And it hasn't got the default IP address because that doesn't report back anything at all.

The message 'no route to host' seems to indicate that your slug is not on the same subnet as your PC. Since your slug is at 192.168.0.3, your PC should have an IP adress like 192.168.0.n, where 0 < n < 255.

[AndyCooll]

The message 'no route to host' seems to indicate that your slug is not on the same subnet as your PC. Since your slug is at 192.168.0.3, your PC should have an IP adress like 192.168.0.n, where 0 < n < 255.

Thanks for your reply. I can confirm that in actual fact all my pc's are on the 192.168.0.x/255.255.255.0 subnet.