marvell plug computer

[Aaron]

I did some searching and I cannot find a compelling reason to get one of these. I did some searched and looked at PogoApps but there was not much there. I can do bittorent, streaming, etc with my HTPC & Server already. A "remote" usb monitor is 100% unnecessary since Android tablets are dirt cheap and easier than wiring ethernet.

Am I missing something cool?

 

[damage]

- a 3W LAMP ( http://goo.gl/0YJsZ ) server
- a 3W asterisk server that you never need to touch/reboot/etc
- any application where you'd need a distributed node:
* zoned speaker/tts client without the need to run speaker wire & set up mechanical zones
* distributed contact closure sensing - put one behind my entertainment unit, now i can free up 4 pairs of cat5 from 4 current sensors to my wiring closet and put in a gigE link with the free wires
* zoned bluetooth proximity
* reduce antenna wiring runs (less signal loss) from a w800 or rfid receiver by putting the receiver & a dockstar near the antenna, capturing the data w/ the dock & sending it across your network
* split a 1wire network into 2 to increase reliability if you have a large network
* networked, streaming baby monitor?

when our house was built in 1999, i only ran 2 cat-5 to every room (which seemed like a lot back then) and since it's 2 stories with no crawlspace or basement, adding more wire isn't going to happen. so i find particular value in distributed solutions and the dockstar works for this.

 

[pete_c]

I'm looking forward to getting the ones that I ordered.

Curious whether you can run Optware on it?

I've installed it on my PBO NMT and been able to do all kinds of "things" with it; so much that I formatted a USB drive and now have to use symbolic links to expand the internal memory. My favorite is the ability to utilize Dropbear SSH for some quick file editing and copying. Vi and Joe was getting a bit "old" for me.

 

[damage]

I'm looking forward to getting the ones that I ordered.

Curious whether you can run Optware on it?

I've installed it on my PBO NMT and been able to do all kinds of "things" with it; so much that I formatted a USB drive and now have to use symbolic links to expand the internal memory. My favorite is the ability to utilize Dropbear SSH for some quick file editing and copying. Vi and Joe was getting a bit "old" for me.

i think you can load openwrt on it & you may be able to access optware packages that way, but if i recall from my nslu2, debian has a ton more packages available compared to optware. no vi for me, i installed full blown emacs on my dock

 

[Aaron]

- a 3W LAMP ( http://goo.gl/0YJsZ ) server
- a 3W asterisk server that you never need to touch/reboot/etc
- any application where you'd need a distributed node:
* zoned speaker/tts client without the need to run speaker wire & set up mechanical zones
* distributed contact closure sensing - put one behind my entertainment unit, now i can free up 4 pairs of cat5 from 4 current sensors to my wiring closet and put in a gigE link with the free wires
* zoned bluetooth proximity
* reduce antenna wiring runs (less signal loss) from a w800 or rfid receiver by putting the receiver & a dockstar near the antenna, capturing the data w/ the dock & sending it across your network
* split a 1wire network into 2 to increase reliability if you have a large network
* networked, streaming baby monitor?

when our house was built in 1999, i only ran 2 cat-5 to every room (which seemed like a lot back then) and since it's 2 stories with no crawlspace or basement, adding more wire isn't going to happen. so i find particular value in distributed solutions and the dockstar works for this.

It looks like several of these would be USB redirect - how does that work with these units?
How do you get the contact closure devices to work over it?

 

[damage]

It looks like several of these would be USB redirect - how does that work with these units?
How do you get the contact closure devices to work over it?

http://www.cocoontech.com/forums/index.php...st&p=147038

 

[drozwood90]

Well, so far, things have been pretty good. I've been able to clear off my Sandisk Cruzer Thumbdrive (8GB). I "guess" at setting up partitions. It is not as easy as "dos" fdisk. I can do the conversion, but it's just a pain the software doesn't just tell me what size I am making everything.

Anyway, I cleared off my thumbdrive and re-ran the script that was linked earlier in the thread. Worked great!

I want to try to get a few 1-2GB drives, but I'm not seeing any "free" at the moment. Plus, I have 3 units. 1 is hacked right now, and I'm trying to get an idea how much space I need.

I think I'll get 1GB drives cheaper (freeer) than 2GB, but don't want to get 1GB if I need more space. It's funny, I looked through all my tuhmbdrives. I have 5 of them.
-Sandisk Cruzer - 8GB
-"micro" hard drive based one from Woot - died 4GB...I think the platter is loose (it clicks when you shake it)
-"1.25 inch" drive from thingfling.com 20GB, not too bad...but I don't want to use that as I use it for actually sneaker netting stuff
-Sandisk something or other 256MB - not large enough
-Dlink brand (I think) 512MB - not large enough
So, I need to get my hands on some cheap 1GB - 2GB drives, so I can setup permanent drives for all 3 Dockstars. I don't mind experimenting with the 8GB drive...but I really do use it for sneaker-netting stuff around.

For the time being, while not looking hard, but keeping an eye out for 1GB-2GB drives...the next goal is to get the Debain RAID packages installed. As far as I can tell, to get ZFS, should work, so long as I am not intending on having the boot drive be part of the zfs (which I am not). I found a few guides. As soon as I experiment to ensure their validity, I'll post them. One looks too easy...as all my experience with Linux is slackware...so, maybe it really IS that easy in Debian. However, it looks like run a few commands, reboot, then you have all the packages. Run a few more commands and the RAID is all setup (I've only done raid within a GUI, so I don't know what the command line stuff is).

After that, I think I want to try to get Crashplan to work. If it doesn't, I'm not too worried. I will just setup the network share to my ZFS drive and then let my Windows7 server do it's thing. I'm still considering using Crashplan. However, for the moment, I'd settle for just having a copy of the entire server's main storage drive. A few tools Pete had posted looked really good for doing system snapshots. I might go that route for the c: drive...but have it dumped to this network drive.

Fine tuning thoughts: I'd like to see about having my Debian install put the drives to sleep. Unlike the server, these will only be accessed once a day...so...why not put them to sleep? I think only one of my USB drives do not pay attention to the sleep command...but a new USB shell is only $15-20...so again...why not?

I'm curious what kind of performance hit I'm going to see with ZFS. I know I've tested 1 drive. I was able to hit the 33MPS limit. I should test again with more then 1 drive in the "provided OS", then test in Debian to see if there is any gains / losses. I'm expecting the 33MPS to go up in the base OS, as my USB hard drives are really IDE...so they are just that slow. However, to hit more then one, I should be able to get multiples of 33MPS speed increases, assuming that there is enough Processor overhead. I'll try to remember to test this (no promises!) before I create the ZFS drive...as I want to make sure I'm testing with the same drives for each comparison, so the only variable will be the OS and number of drives.

--Dan

 

[pete_c]

Well, so far, things have been pretty good. I've been able to clear off my Sandisk Cruzer Thumbdrive (8GB). I "guess" at setting up partitions. It is not as easy as "dos" fdisk. I can do the conversion, but it's just a pain the software doesn't just tell me what size I am making everything.

This is a copy and paste:

mke2fs - create an ext2/ext3 filesystem

Synopsis
mke2fs [ -c | -l filename ] [ -b block-size ] [ -f fragment-size ] [ -g blocks-per-group ] [ -i bytes-per-inode ] [ -j ] [ -J journal-options ] [ -N number-of-inodes ] [ -n ] [ -m reserved-blocks-percentage ] [ -o creator-os ] [ -O feature[,...] ] [ -q ] [ -r fs-revision-level ] [ -E extended-options ] [ -v ] [ -F ] [ -L volume-label ] [ -M last-mounted-directory ] [ -S ] [ -T filesystem-type ] [ -V ] device [ blocks-count ]
mke2fs -O journal_dev [ -b block-size ] [ -L volume-label ] [ -n ] [ -q ] [ -v ] external-journal [ blocks-count ]

Description
mke2fs is used to create an ext2/ext3 filesystem (usually in a disk partition). device is the special file corresponding to the device (e.g /dev/hdXX). blocks-count is the number of blocks on the device. If omitted, mke2fs automagically figures the file system size. If called as mkfs.ext3 a journal is created as if the -j option was specified.

To check sizes just type "fdisk -l" and to see how much you have used up type "df -h"

Example of my PBO with a 1TB drive and a 256Mb thumbdrive. I have symbolic links to working applications on the 1TB Linux partitions. I have the thumb drive set up with binaries to load the OS (fat16).

~ # fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 2 121541 976270050 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 121542 121561 160650 82 Linux swap
/dev/sda3 121562 121581 160650 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdb: 262 MB, 262799360 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 31 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 32 256608+ 6 FAT16
Partition 1 has different physical/logical endings:
phys=(30, 254, 63) logical=(31, 242, 19)

~ # df -h
Filesystem Size Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/root 78.6M 71.7M 6.9M 91% /
/dev/mtdblock/2 69.0M 67.3M 1.7M 98% /usr/local/etc
/dev/rd/0 40.0k 40.0k 0 100% /mnt/rd
/dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part1 931.0G 368.1G 563.0G 40% /tmp/hdd/volumes/HDD1
/dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part3 151.9M 4.0M 140.0M 3% /tmp/hdd/root
/dev/sda3 151.9M 4.0M 140.0M 3% /tmp/hdd/volumes/BT

 

[damage]

just some random bits that may help some:
- some info on getting usb sound working reliably: http://goo.gl/rulAk
- after you get a good install working on your dock, use partimage to make a copy of it in case you mess something up playing with it later (apt-get install partimage). good too if your flash disk ever dies, especially if you plan on using this as a NAS
- my image takes up about 800MB so far, so you may be able to use that as a high end for sizing your partitions and flash drive needs (i've installed a bunch of dev tools & libraries)

 

[drozwood90]

Is that 800MB with the "swap" space?

--Dan

 

[damage]

Is that 800MB with the "swap" space?

--Dan

no, just the boot partition.

 

[drozwood90]

So, a 1GB t-drive might be cutting it a bit close?

 

[damage]

So, a 1GB t-drive might be cutting it a bit close?

for me it is. depends on what you need loaded and if you want to leave space to play. you can do 'df' to see how much space you've used up.

 

[drozwood90]

damage / Pete,

Thanks for the commands. I'll mess around with it tonight and see what I can figure out!

--Dan

 

[electron]

I just received my unit, just need to find some time now