uNSLUng – hacking the Linksys NSLU file server
Posted on May 10, 2005
WOW. This is so incredibly cool. Linksys’s NSLU device is a consumer network storage device that allows you to connect up to two USB hardrives to a network. Go look. What’s special is that it is actually a little linux box. And this online community is dedicated to improving the firmware distro on this box so that it can do all sorts of fun things. Such as running websites, email servers, itunes servers, sharing USB printers, …. Basically you can probably make it do anything a linux machine with a huge amount of attached storage and two USB ports can do (more with a hub). Might be a problem with RAM though. Jamie is probably all over this by now.
How about a MP3 player? (found here)
* USB1 with 250G Lacie HD hanging off it.
* USB2 with USB Soundcard hanging off (Griffin iMic in my case, also tried others).Patched the unslung-able-kernel to allow for USB Audio. Ported alsa-drivers to OpenEmbedded and built for unslung-able-kernel. Ported a set of audio utilities, accumulating into the port of MPD (http://www.musicpd.org). My slug is playing music to my stereo system now, feeding of the mp3’s on the disk. It also feeds in Internet Radio stations. To control it I use a webbrowser through a php front and a client on my iPAQ.
Want one? In Australia? Here are some prices.
UPDATE: I have been doing a bit more research on the home NAS front, and I am starting to lean more towards a kurobox, which is what the NSLU would be if linksys designed it with hacking in mind (and an internal HDD, which you supply). Check out this Tom’s Networking review. Don’t know how to get this in Australia though. Will investigate.
UPDATE (MUCH LATER): Seeing as how I am editing this entry anyways to change Jamie’s home page, I though I would mention that I ended up getting a linkstation and hacking it into a linux box (using the freelink debian firmware). I have been running it for a while now, and it has worked out fabulously.
» Filed Under Blogger Posts, NAS, NSLU, linux
Comments
3 Responses to “uNSLUng – hacking the Linksys NSLU file server”
I have the DLink-G600 wireless NAS with internal and two esternal USBs…so for $120 I got the whole thing working wirelessly…linux is supreme (and smal enough to burn on an OEM chipset!)
Now here’s my question: got an off-the-shelf solution for sharing the media to iPaq PPC? so I don’t have to learn php?
You could try setting up a streaming video server, and pick the stream up on the PPC, but I’ve never done anything like that so you are on your own from here
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That NSLU2 is a neat little toy. I set one up with Debian and it ran pretty good. Transfer speeds were pretty weak, but, hey, you get a Linux server in something the size of a pack of cigarettes.