[clug] Some NSLU2 errata

[Robert Edwards]

Just wanted to "correct" some minor details in Michael's excellent
Google/NSLU2 talk last night:

1) There are two versions of "Debian" for NSLU2 (as Michael said),
but the one that Michael refers to as "Debian Unstable" is also
the version that the NSLU2 folk call "DebianSlug" and it uses the
standard Debian ARM packages (little endian and the .deb package
format). The other Debian (big-endian) is called OpenDebianSlug,
uses the ipkg package format and is (apparently) obsolete. It is
based on OpenSlug (which also uses the ipkg repository).
More details at:
http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/DebianSlug/HomePage ,
http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/OpenSlug/HomePage and
http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/DebianSlug/OpenDebianSlug

Basically, you want to use DebianSlug if you want to use Debian,
or OpenSlug if you want to use ipkg (and you Gentoo folk might
also want to consider using:
http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/GentooSlug/HomePage )

2) Some people asked me about the second Ethernet port - the ARM
chip has a second Ethernet port, but the pins for it are not
accessible in the NSLU2 design, nor, I believe, does the Intel
binary only driver support it (but I could be wrong on that one).
If you want additional Ethernet ports, you will need to use a
USB-Ethernet adaptor (many of which are supported).

3) Michael mentioned the Linksys kernel - my understanding is that
the Linksys kernel is a 2.4.x kernel and that the 2.6.16 kernel
that OpenSlug (and DebianSlug) use has been built by the NSLU2 hacker
community (but still uses the Intel binary-only Ethernet driver).

Other than those minor niggles, an excellent presentation (and very
brave to do the live FLASHing during a demo!).

Cheers,

Bob Edwards.