[volunteergrid2-l] Inexpensive, low-power grid nodes based on ARM platform

[Johannes Nix]

On Thu, 16 Feb 2012 09:13:15 -0700
Shawn Willden <shawn at willden.org> wrote:

> 
> We need to get a couple more nodes, up, though... hopefully some of
> our recent new members will be getting up and running soon.
> 

Working on that :)

............................................................
root at colibri:/mnt# badblocks -s -w -p1 /dev/sdb
Teste mit Muster 0xaa: erledigt                            
Lesen und Vergleichen:erledigt                            
Teste mit Muster 0x55:   1.92% done, 63:21:19 elapsed
.............................................................


What I am going to do is to set up a D-Link DNS-323 NAS to run
tahoe on debian squeeze.

This class of devices might be interesting for others as well. 
The DNS-323 is an inexpensive embedded ARM storage unit which runs an
embedded Linux; having 64 MB of RAM and support for 2 TB disks.
This is way more storage for the buck than you can have from 
webhosting providers. And it uses far less power than a desktop PC,
which means significant savings on the electricity bill.

The DNS-323 vendor firmware isn't very exciting and specifically it 
does not support up-to date network software.  However, it is possible 
to flash it with actualized free firmware (named Alt-F) and run 
debian squeeze in a chroot system on top of this. I will compile 
a few links if I succeed with that.

BTW, there exists quite a number of similar systems with a wide
range of specifications. Keywords one can google for are "QNAP
TS-210", Debian on Kirkwood platform, or Marvells' SheevaPlug. 
I think some are more expensive but probably much easier to
set up, for example SheevaPlug comes with Ubuntu Linux out of the box.



Johannes