[LUAU] Anyone use a Linksys NSLU2? USB hard disk drives are FOSSfriendly?

Brian Chee chee at hawaii.edu
Thu Dec 28 12:00:17 PST 2006


Just FYI on this thread, I just got my new Astrodyne power supply catalog
and wall warts and inline power supplies run from 12watts up to 130watts and
can output from as low as 2.5volts up to 48volts (amperages vary upon
voltage, natch)

http://www.astrodyne.com

They also have some VERY nice DC to DC converters that I've used for the
PODS project...the cool part is that one of the pins controls output so you
don't need an additional relay for power control. We used a basic stamp that
used a 1 farad capacitor as a battery (10 hours and could be charged from a
2"x2" photovoltaic) that would then power on (using this control pin) the
power hungry (relative) larger general purpose embedded Linux SBC that
controlled our environmental sensors (Dallas Semiconductor 1-wire system),
high res digital cameras (gPhoto) and radios.

The nice thing is that these guys don't have problems with quan 1 orders and
also provide engineering drawings for the pin patterns and such. Some of the
inline switching power adapters can also provide multiple outputs like
5V/12V which is super handy for SBC computers.

P.S. they also have a large variety of DIN rail power supplies...for my home
server I'm contemplating a DIN rail machine if I can find one that isn't too
expensive...perhaps I could make/find a case for the SOEKRIS board that is
superb and has encryption modules on some models. (not to mention no cross
compilers since SOEKRIS is Intel compatible)

/brian chee


InfoWorld Media Group c/o
University of Hawaii SOEST (ANCL)
2525 Correa Road, HIG 500
Honolulu, HI 96822
Tel: 808-956-5797, Fax: 877-284-1934

-----Original Message-----
From: luau-bounces at lists.hosef.org [mailto:luau-bounces at lists.hosef.org] On
Behalf Of Jim Thompson
Sent: Wednesday, December 27, 2006 9:47 PM
To: LUAU
Subject: Re: [LUAU] Anyone use a Linksys NSLU2? USB hard disk drives are
FOSSfriendly?


On Dec 27, 2006, at 6:33 PM, R. Scott Belford wrote:

> Jim Thompson wrote:
>
>> You might conclude that I'm considering building a product around  
>> all this.   About 70% of what I'm thinking is in this thread
>>>> http://www.intel.com/design/servers/storage/ss4000-E/
>
> This runs a Linux kernel.  Is it a m0no0wall derivative rather than  
> being based on freeNAS?

Yes, the product I pointed to, *as shipped*, runs linux.

You can think of 'm0n0wall' as a specialized FreeBSD "distro" for  
networking hardware.    FreeNAS is a 'spin' of m0n0wall focused on  
supporting fileservers, rather than routers/firewalls/Access Points.

For this application, I prefer FreeBSD over Linux.  There are many  
reasons.

For one thing, the ZFS support is further along, and Linux's "FUSE"  
architecture (necessary to adopt ZFS on linux, because ZFS isn't  
(yet?) licensed under a GPL-compatible license, so FUSE is used to  
keep the ZFS code in user-space), is never going to be 'fast'.

For another, FreeBSD's "Geom" architecture, so GELI and GDBE become  
options.   Now if you note that I explained that I'd found a board  
with an on-board HiFn crypto accelerator, (one that just happens to  
already be supported by FreeBSD's "crypt' framework (supported by  
GELI)), you can probably put the pieces together.  :-)   GELI also  
has some interesting 'features' that allow me to market a key  
recovery service.

Putting FreeBSD, ZFS (and a variant of FreeNAS) on the product  
involves some work, its true.

But I think I get a better product out of it than just sticking  
FreeNAS on a PC.

And remember, the hardware I'm buying is identical to that marketed  
by Intel, but I don't pay Intel's "uplift" (nor the channel margin)  
seen in the $560 price.

Jim
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