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Meeting the Slug
By chris dalby | June 18, 2008
If you read this blog, you will realise from my previous couple of posts that I have been taken with the Current Cost craze that has hit town. That’s right folkes, I’ve put my house online and I’m monitoring energy usage in the name of saving money.
Today I received delivery of my Linksys NSLU2, also known as a SLUG. Advertised as network storage for less than £60, the specs are ok. But then with a relatively easy firmware flash, you have a linux server for only 4watts of electricity and a home automation hub or IP phone system on your hands or whatever you want to use a linux server for.
I have literally only played with this for a couple of hours and I am amazed how easy it has been to flash the firmware and setup Unslung, a linux distro developed specifically for this device.
The flash upgrade to the Unslung firmware is well documented and very easy. I also attached a 40GB external hard drive and changed the system into Unslung mode which was a breeze. Simply follow the readme file and all is explained.
I now have a 40gb mobile hdd attached via USB to the slug. More than enough for my needs. Next up, general config, the nanobroker, MySql and reporting. All I need now is a cable. Stay tuned.
June 20th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Nice article. I bought one of these over a year ago for the original purpose. I stopped using it after the ‘quality’ inbuilt software suddenly decided that all of my files were now 0K folders. Now I have got something interesting to do with the device :o)