fvdw firmware on RPi

[mdi]

Hi guys,
not sure if you ever thought of "porting" your great firmware over a RPi machine.

I think there will be some PROs:
- very affordable base system: it would run with a RPi, an SD card and a little USB pen or USB disk;
- storage could be managed by the users, as an external USB disk would be enough. Anyway storage would totally rely on external USB disk, including internal disks connected to external docking stations;
- the basic firmware could be complemented by user-installed programs, so everyone is free to customize or add services to the basic firmware.
- very limited consumption
- My nas (NWSP2) is not sold anymore by Lacie. If it brakes, I cannot easily replace it.

There will be some CONs too:
- RPi has limited resources.

But your firmware is so good that you can choose what service to enable ;-)
So the CON can be overridden, somehow. In addition, it could be that somebody likes to have 2 RPi's to run different services on each one (I do, for example).

I think that would be a very nice way of growing for your firmware if it could be run over a RPi. I would love it as a solution for a friend of mine... ;)

Just an idea, not sure how hard it is.

Cheers!! :evilwink

[fvdw]

great idea. seems the raspberry is using an armv6 processor (lacie armv5).
What we will need is a kernel running on this board and compatible with our firmware.
It uses a BCM2835 soc, which is present in the linux kerner source code, so compiling a kernel could be relative easy.

However all the packages used in the firmware are compiled for armv5, will they also run on an armv6 ? if not then everything needs to be recompiled...
maybe you can do some investigation on this

[mdi]

Hi fvdw, unfortunately I'm not an expert in this sense, but I'm using RPi machines at home and at work for different purposes. There are several well supported distributions available.

I use Openelec as a tv mediacenter, Raspbmc for a similar purpose but it allows some extra sw to be installed, but the most versatile one is Raspbian, which offers a Debian prepared system, on top of which you can install almost anything.

For sure it would allow rsync, miniDLNA, aMule and transmission to run. Maybe not all together at once.
I can give superficial details for the installation and usage, but in terms of kernel and the rest I'm not helpful, sorry.

[mdi]

Light httpd and php would work too.

[fvdw]

I think in the summer I have some time to look at this, unfortunate not on short notice.. But I like the idea..

[fvdw]

one more question, do you know how the boot loader is loading a kernel and root file system ?

[Jocko]

@fvdw

you will find detail here : http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/qu ... ry-pi-boot

On the SD card you must create a "boot" partition (FAT 16 or 32). This one must be the first partition and will contain bootloader files (https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware ... aster/boot)

otherwise for making a NAS with a a RPI we should use a RPI model B (http://elinux.org/RPi_Hardware)

[fvdw]

thanks Jocko

still need to find out more on in which format this kernel image. but I guess the quickest way to buy such a device, and agree type B is the one we should go for

[Jocko]

I think that you find what you want here: http://elinux.org/RPi_Kernel_Compilation

[fvdw]

:thumbup I will buy one and see what it brings