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Linux In A Box 73

Posted by CmdrTaco from the little-is-better dept.
Henrik pointed us to the Linux in a Box project, which is a bitchin' little project to create an inexpensive little Linux box: it boots a 2.0.36 kernel from a ramdisk, and it's pingable and Telenetable, as well as being usable as a Web server. Only for the brave of heart and willing to hack.
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Linux In A Box More

Linux In A Box

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  • Well, if we can do a Bridge/Firewall with it, it will be really cool.
  • Not to worry though the lovely people seem to have cached it on this url [google.com].

    Not sure how up to date it is though.
  • This might be useful for say, firewalls or proxies, a smart switch or gateway or router. Could do anything from what I know now because the site has been SLASHDOTTED!

  • Mmmm good (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If i could fit in in a Spam tin, then it could be the world's smallest open relay mail server :)
  • Well, if you're looking for something like this, head over to

    lrp.c0wz.com [c0wz.com]

    LRP is a Linux based router that boots from a floppy. It now comes in many flavors, sure to meet your needs. I'm running it on a 486SX/25 that I picked up for $10. How's that for a cheap router?

  • What about the children? (Score:5)

    by freebe ( 174010 ) on Monday August 07, 2000 @05:22AM (#873488) Homepage
    a bitchin' little project

    Please stop using these nasty words on Slashdot. Sites like this that are child-accessible should know to restrain their content in the face of pending laws. How many times does it need to be told to people that content that is offensive to children needs to be kept away from them?

    it boots a 2.0.36 kernel

    On top of that, you go and influence these poor suggestable little children with thoughts of running an outdated kernel that is simply a security hole! How do you even dare? Would you allow your children to use NT3.5? Would you allow them to use an outdated kernel? Think, Taco, what about the children?

    it's pingable and Telenetable, as well as being usable as a Web server. Only for the brave of heart and willing to hack.

    I think you meant willing to be hacked. Once again, what about the children? Would you let your child use telnet? Why suggest it to the children on Slashdot? You should know better than that. As a maintainer of a website like this, you have a responsibility to not influence suggestible little children with Nazi ideas such as running Telnet on a computer.

  • It's always good to hear about more projects to miniturize Linux and personal computers, but what is the use of a small little box with no keyboard? Am I supposed to telepathically communicate with the box (although that would be kinda cool). I am really waiting for: Linux in a pin head, or having Linux run in a 1-inch by 1-inch by 4 millimeters hand watch.

  • Slashdotted!! (Score:4)

    by grahamsz ( 150076 ) on Monday August 07, 2000 @05:25AM (#873490) Homepage Journal
    That'll teach them to run a webserver from an embedded processor!

    I guess its the sort of webserver i'd like to have on my toaster so I didn't have to get up to check how brown my toast was but i'd like to think my toaster would be exempt from /. ing.
  • I cannot read the site (already /. 'ed?) but from the heading it sound like the lpr linux router [linuxrouter.org] from a flop project.

  • why would I need one (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07, 2000 @05:29AM (#873492)
    when in a few months I can get BSD In A Box [apple.com] instead?

    Prettier box too.

  • Linux already does run on a watch. Check it out. [linuxjournal.com] (actually, the OS is running out of site and the display is on the watch)
    --

  • Linux in a wristwatch by IBM (Score:3)

    by Kakurenbo Shogun ( 64436 ) on Monday August 07, 2000 @05:30AM (#873494) Homepage
    Here [yahoo.com] is a story on Yahoo's daily news about IBM prototyping a wristwatch running Linux. It uses some wireless technology to communicate with other computers (no, there's not a dinky little 101 key keyboard with keys so small that philosophers can argue about how many angels can dance on them). The article says they're not planning on commecializing it though...

  • Supercheap Linux system w/firewall (Score:5)

    by www.sorehands.com ( 142825 ) on Monday August 07, 2000 @05:31AM (#873495) Homepage
    Why bother with a special embedded system? If you are looking for a cheap system, why not take an old 386 system/paperweight and setup the Floppy Firewall?

    This is a simple distro (free!) that gets you up and running on a low-end system w/o a hard drive.

    Get your Floppy Firewall [zelow.no] at http://www.zelow.no/floppyfw [zelow.no].

    If it don't have what you want, you can always add more. But, if you add too much, you might have to add a hard drive.

  • How utterly useful. Click this link to go through the page, but no cache on the real site. Very, very, informative. Definitely worthy of a (3, Informative).

    </sacrasm>

  • Sounds like Freesco [freesco.org] (I have a copy running on a 486 25 meg box). Its a router that fits on one disk and can do a lot of nifty things (ie. bridge, router, firewall, dialup/in server, tunneling...)

    You are a unique individual...just like everyone else.
  • Doesn't look like google have all that much of the site cached.

    You can get a bit more info about the project on this page [www.ing.dk] but unfortunately it's in danish.

    It appears to use an Intel 386EX embedded CPU, a 4Mbyte Prom, 64Mbytes DRAM (in a standard simm), and a 10mbit ethernet interface.

    I'm unable to get any idea of how big this thing actually is or how complex it's pcb is well from looking at diagrams i'd speculate it's about 6x4 inches...

    If only i spoke danish :)

  • Re:Supercheap Linux system w/firewall (Score:3)

    by Scurra UK ( 143378 ) on Monday August 07, 2000 @05:36AM (#873499)
    If all you want is a small box to connect you to the net I can't reccomend <a href="http://www.freesco.org">Freesco</a> enough (it's nothing to do with SCO)
    <p>It's so easy to set up that someone who'd never heard of UNIX can do it, and it's a dead reliable way of connecting your home/small office network or whatever to the net, AND it all fits on a floppy. Been connecting our house for about a year now, the only time it's gone down is when the floppy drive in our aging 486 broke.

  • Linux in a box? (Score:4)

    by Segfault 11 ( 201269 ) on Monday August 07, 2000 @05:38AM (#873500) Homepage
    Woohoo! I've always wanted to have Linux in a box. Up until now, it has been stuck inside a bottle on my desktop.

    Oh wait -- does anyone remember this Linux server in a box [jrcs.co.uk]? You also might be able to get Linux in a box at this site [linuxmall.com].

    Be sure to check out:

    There are simply not enough things that come in boxes. Just think how shameful it is for all that fruit to be sitting out there naked in the produce section at the grocery store...

  • I for one, being an SA and amateur programmer,
    would like building block systems. It would be
    great to be able to buy systems for $300 - $400
    that could be chained together to experiment with
    distributed computing. The small and quiet are
    for my studio apartment. If I had resources like
    this, I could play with clusters and agents or
    CODA. Anyone remember the Ergo brick? This is
    what we need. Even better, computing could come
    transmeta "slices". How cheap would a webpad be
    if it had no LCD? Need more power in your cluster?
    Just plug another slice into your cluster cabinet.
    How small would a webpad be without display? You
    could have a VCR sized chassis with 8 machines in
    it.

    -Dave
  • Embedded processor servers are not currently intended for heavy production server duties. I think that embedded process servers can serve a couple of different niches.

    Firewalls/Routers

    Vanity Web Servers - Set up your family photos

    Small Workgroup Servers

    Intranet Servers (Internal Project Pages)

    "Whiteboard" servers

    CVS Servers

    Basically anything that requires a cheap, small, server without a high load.

  • "My karma hasn't changed it all. According to Rob, that's on purpose."

    To help you in your quest for lower karma, please post the email where Rob claimed this.
    --
  • anything like "Linux for Dummies" -- which comes in a box?
  • ...so what's the big deal??
  • Feh. Try this [google.com]. It's a cached version of the link at the bottom of the entry page. Instead of mocking the poor fellow, try a little ingenuity.

    --ian

  • Hey! It wasn't redundant when I clicked 'reply'... *sheesh*...those moderators... ;-)


    --
  • I just boughta cheap ($129 us dollars) box the other day from egghead.com... it's basically a 200mhz, 64MB RAM, diskless box with linux on a 16MB flash rom. It's a kick-ass little box, perfectly setup to be a webserver, etc... How much cheaper does the "Linux in a box" project need to get? Is $129 enough? If so, contact fujitsu, the MFG of this box.

    --cr@ckwhore
  • Is there a(nother) bug in Slash? This comment should not have gone in here, but in the other article. Or did you just reply to the wrong one?
  • Free your Linux from the bottle. Linux has no need of earthly constraints. Think "Linux outside the box". Join our project: LITA ("Linux In The Air" or "LITA's In The Air")
    --

  • I wonder... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    if /. bothers to *warn* a website they are about to go doooooown.. uuuggggghhhh
  • (shameless plug)

    or, there's DJ In A Box [dyndns.org].

    :)

    :wq!

  • Is there a "Life in a box"?

    Because a LOT of people here (including me) need one ;).

  • Here's a better cache. (Score:3)

    by vattervi ( 191289 ) on Monday August 07, 2000 @07:14AM (#873514)
    The Linux in a Box project has been around for a long time. The new release is version 3, but there is quite a bit of information cached about version 2. The main differences between version 2 and version 3 seem to be that version 3 uses 10-BaseT (instead of version 2's 10-Base2) ethernet and version 3 has 4 megabytes of flash rom. Below are several Google caches you may find informative:

  • You know those isolinear chips from Star Trek TNG? Yeah! Have a main system that can take hundreds or thousands of smaller modules. A module could be a processor or hard-drive, service provider, whatever.

    Need more space? plug in a harddrive module.
    Need more processing? plug in a processor module.

    The idea would be that everything is hot-swappable and come to life as soon as you've plugged it in.

    (note that the modules don't have to be the size of the isolinear chips... its the idea tho).

    You know what the biggest problem would be? Nine months after you've setup this system in your company, someone will create a new protocol and make the one you're using obsolete.. sigh.

    ;-)

  • Dr. Seuss running Linux... (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07, 2000 @07:28AM (#873516)

    Can you run it on a box?
    And see how fast it overclocks?
    Can you run it on a toaster?
    Or run it on a roller coaster?
    Can you run it on your phone?
    And call your kernel far from home?
    Can you run it on your watch?
    Or pour some hot grits on your crotch?
  • Since the article is too /.'ed for anyone to read, I can only speculate. I have no idea why this linux box is so exciting, I picked up a couple pentium boxen cheap at a goverment auction ($30/box, 16MB RAM, 850MB HD) and I have linux running in a box. Ok, several boxen. Maybe this machine is cheap, but how can it be as cheap as $30/box? Plus I have the ability to expand it out, and well, now you know my opinion.

    I grep, therefore I am

  • This is easy! (Score:5)

    by smurd ( 48976 ) on Monday August 07, 2000 @07:31AM (#873518)
    We have been Shipping PC-104 linux boxes for the past 2 years. All it took was a Slackware rescue floppy, a bootdisk and an EPROM burner.

    The procedure for making the EPROMS for the RTD PC-104 card [rtdusa.com] is as follows:

    1. Fire up the card with +5 and 12 volts
    2. Create a freshly formatted floppy with the included Datalight DOS 5.0 [datalight.com] on it. I know, it's sad but we had some DOS setup code for the card.
    3. Drop loadlin and the kernal You DID build a baby size kernal for this with initrd right? on the floppy
    4. Create a ramdisk on you development system to build the root image for your new card
    5. umount the ramdisk
    6. Set the ramdisk to zeros with:
      dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ram0 count=4096
    7. Make a filesystem
      mke2fs -vm0 /dev/ram0 4096
    8. Mount the ramdisk and copy your root filesystem in:
      mount -t ext2 /dev/ram0 /mnt
      cp -pxR /projects/snmp/root_fs/* /mnt
    9. unmount it again and squish it down with:
      umount /mnt
      dd if=/dev/ram0 bs=1k count=4096 | gzip -v9 > /projects/snmp/eprom/root_fs.gz
    10. Now, use sneaker net to move the floppy to the DOS machine running the RTD supplied EPROM image maker and tell it to make the entire floppy into an EPROM image .BIN file(s)
    11. Burn the files into EPROM, plug 'em into the card, apply power and open a beer as you watch Linux boot on a 4 inch card
    Have fun.
  • Here [slashdot.org] (It wasn't me who talked with him).

    BTW, even though the parent is at 0, my karma is still at 113 (at least it claims to be...)

  • What we truly need is Linux(tm) in a Lego(tm) (Score:3)

    by brokeninside ( 34168 ) on Monday August 07, 2000 @08:01AM (#873520)

    Imagine being able to snap together a Beowulf cluster. Run out of disk space, just snap on another RAID brick. Best of all, with the mindstorm attachments, you can watch the system upgrade itself when it needs more resources.

    Just don't let your system have a credit card number or you may find it taking over your apartment today, and the world tomorrow....

  • Forget the *watch*. I wanna see Windows running on a *computer*. And it would have to run longer than the Linux watch without requiring a reboot.

    I'd pay to see that.

    ______________
    Levity is the antidote to Gravity.

  • lurn too spel.

    it's coloniel, not kernal

    Just kidding (ducks)

    seriously though, I'd like to run Linux on a PC104 card.. About how much are the cards? They never tell you the price on the mfgr's websites. I guess they are still trying to fit an old-world sales paradigm on a new-world product. Their loss.

  • also (Score:2)

    by mattdm ( 1931 )
    there's also the linux router project [linuxrouter.org]

    --

  • well.. a number of the caches of this site have let me down too, even the google ones.

    could I suggest, that when the next big batch of cash comes in, slashdot expands by running all appropriate links for the last two days though a slashdot run cache system?

    I propose, somewhat jokingly, that we call this feature cachedot

    -Daniel

  • For those enterprising and lucky enough to find such things:

    I found at a computer show a HP Vectra 486/66 desktop system w/8MB Ram, 400MB HD, embedded SVGA and sound for only $17.00. Add to that 2 ISA 10baseT network cards that I got for $1.25 bringing the total cost to $19.50.

    I then did a network install of RH 6.1 - as mimimum as I could (about 125Mb) and poof - firewall, NAT server for a cable modem.

    I plan on selling it to a cable modem using friend for a bit more than cost :)



  • Wrong procedure! (Score:3)

    by Morgaine ( 4316 ) on Monday August 07, 2000 @09:24AM (#873526)
    If you have any intention of selling really lots of those units, you need to change your bootup, loading and configuration procedure rather drastically to:

    STEP 1: Connect unit to LAN through RJ45, apply power.

    STEP 2: Unit discovers all local networking parameters by snooping, configures itself as a webserver on an unused address of the subnet (snoop to see its advertisement), and everything else is configured up through a browser.

    STEP 3: There is no step 3, because *everything* should be programmable in step 2, including uploading kernels to onboard flash.

    Yes, I know that the reason PC-104 cards tend to be as dumb and old-fashioned as they were 5 years ago is because in theory every extra facility adds a fractional cost to the product, but I can't help feel that the accountants aren't factoring in the cost of people's time, nor the likelihood of increased sales if the item is massively easy to use.
  • For a while there was an alternative server that ran about 30min behind slashdot it was called cashedot.slashdot.org

  • If only i spoke danish :) I do...

    It's 10x16 centimeters, so 4x6 inches is close enough.

    Off my head it costs $250 for parts - some (as in all) assembly required. A few days ago I inquired about a price for an assembled system, but I have yet to get an answer. Will probably be a while now that they got /.'ed.

    If you're into in-a-box stuff, like at what the CSimm [rt-control.com] (no affiliations) does. It's smaller (the whole darn thing fits in an old-style 30 pin ram-socket). Just bought two of those for running CLinux [uclinux.org]. They're pretty little Motorola Dragonballs (also powers the PalmPilot V series) with 8 Megs of RAM and 2 Megs of Flash and an ehternet chip. No sleep for me now :-)

  • Actually, that is just the first one. For each additional unit the procedure is:
    1. put chip in burner
    2. hit "copy" button
    That is all we have to do for units 2 thru n
  • I might have not searched very well but when i was looking for something like this that supported and modem and dialup ppp, i couldnt find it, so i just install a small customized slack install on a old 486, with the floppy distros you sure cant have you php enabled webserver and ssh ;)
  • Real time devices is the high price spread, they run around $500 for the processor card. WinSystems [winsystems.com]Sells stuff alot cheaper (Around $200 two years ago).
    remember, Slackware runs on a 386. There a probably a ton of 386/486 PC-104 cards out there that somebody wants to unload.
  • The "paperweight" idea may be cheap, but has the demerit that the resulting machine isn't small.

    Furthermore, it is not at all unlikely that something of 80386 vintage will seriously suck both for the purposes of servicing the LAN as well as for servicing a modem. On my newer (long retired) 80486 box, the UART couldn't cope well with a 28K modem; getting hardware for that now is liable to be a chore. Similar will be true for Ethernet; being limited to 10Base2 wouldn't kill me, as I use it to hook up my laptop, but a slow ISA card may actually hurt throughput.

    I don't think this combo would work out terribly well to service a DSL or Cable Modem connection...

  • Re:Network (infrastructure) Appliance? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Does this have support for pppd/pppoe or juste ethernet?
  • OT: Have you checked out SoundPlay for BeOS 4.x? It does roughly what your program does on the BeOS.
  • Nope, theres a comment like that in every article ;).
  • Isn't this what SGI is doing with thier new supercomputers? We just had an article on that a couple days ago.
  • I have a 486 acting that's serving DHCP and masquerading for my 3-computer home network. It does just fine, and I don't the load's ever been near what would kill it (it does a take a while for sshd to connect me though). I used to have it running squid, bind, and apache but I figured those weren't worth the load (and keeping updated). It's really easy.

    The webpage the previous poster pointed to should give you all the information you need and more. Start with the newbie-oriented howtos and help files. You'd just need a NIC for the 486. It doesn't even need a hard drive (though don't try running Squid or Samba off a floppy!) You don't need to edit any config files directly using LRP (though you can), since everything is wrapped in a console-based configuration utility. I'm a big fan of the LRP distribution.
  • If LIAB was hosting that site, may god have mercy on it's silicon soul.

    RIP http://www.liab.dk/
  • While it's all well and cool having Linux on board, so is this [ibutton.com]. Only SIMM 72 sized, it has it's own Unix-like OS - you can telnet in, ftp files onto it, and it also acts as a web server.

    Oh - and did I mention you program it in Java - it has it's own virtual machine on board. Plus stacks of I/O - 4 serial, 1-wire, CAN, SBX, I2C, ethernet, parallel, etc. And all for only $50US

    I'm using one for my final year project, and they are very cool.

    - Lindsay

  • Anyone remember that i-Opener Linux hack?

    http://www.linux-hacker.net/imod/imod.ht ml [linux-hacker.net]

  • Doesn't this kinda resemble PicoBSD a little bit? You all remember - a lightweight FreeBSD-3.0 kernel & tiny compressed MFS filesystem & drivers for several ethernet cards & slip/ppp* & routed* on a floppy?
    Am I going to be given a (0, flamebait) for this post? :)
    *-depends on what version you downloaded.
  • Thanks. I've heard of the LRP, and looked into using it for our router/firewall here.

    That's a different beast, though. All of the firewalling code relies on routing. A packet exists on one subnet (on one interface), and if certain conditions are met, it will be passed through to another subnet (on the other interface). This is great, but I think it would be better if this could be done with a bridge instead of a router. A company with a class A/B/C network has to split their net into multiple subnets for a router-based firewall to work, but not for a bridge-based firewall.

    For some info on this technique, check out This link [bell-labs.com].

    Since a bridge looks like a wire to the outside world (it has no effect on the topology of the network), a potential intruder won't know whether their packet has hit a firewall or not. A bridge that rejects a packet looks like the target machine (behind the firewall) is physically disconnected from the network. A traceroute won't identify the firewall (since the packets don't have to go through an IP "interface"), so that makes it harder for someone to figure out what machine to target for an attack.

    I think that some of this functionality is available in the new 2.4x kernels, since they have disconnected the ethernet interfaces from the IP addresses (for other reasons). (This HOWTO [linuxdoc.org] has info on bridge/firewalling)

    The next thing to do is to actually give a bridge an IP address - the same address for either NIC. You'd still have to know which "side" a packet comes from, for the firewalling to work. Once you have this setup, you can contact the machine (if you know its' address), but it doesn't show up if you try to contact something beyond it. Additionally, you can do things like have remote users (whose IP addresses change each time they dial in) use your SMTP/FTP/whatever boxes by authenticating to the brigde/firewall, and having the authentication script add a temporary IPChains-like entry for the dynamic address. That fixes a lot of the problems with spammers using relay hosts. (yes, this sounds a lot like a slightly modified proxy server)

    Maybe this is a good separate topic for discussion on /.

  • That one looks good. I was not aware of it.
  • http://www.linuxrouter.org/
    We've been doing this since 1996.
  • There are people that still find telnet to be a semi-useful service?

    Jason

  • Linux In A Box, from the creator! (Score:4)

    by midiliab ( 219993 ) on Monday August 07, 2000 @01:47PM (#873548)
    Dear Linux Fellows

    I, Mikael Dich, the designer of the Linux In A Box microprocessor board, is pleased that the LIAB project has come up on www.slashdot.com! http://www.liab.dk has broken down due to the heavy load, so here is a little information:

    The board uses i386EX at 25 MHz, 4 Mbyte of FLASH, up to 64 Mbyte of DRAM (72 pin), 10BASE-T, runs on 9-24V DC or AC, 8 watt, 150 grams, 4*6 inches.

    I am cofounder of the company "LIAB Electronics I/S" which produces and sells assembled LIAB microprocessor boards. We deliver these boards complete with a CD-ROM, a Users Manual and a Hardware Reference. Price approx. $300. The CD-ROM contains all documentation, including sources for the bootloader, kernel patches, images for an inital ramdisc, schematics and plot files for the PCB. This documentation is free and everybody is free to manufacture their own LIABs. You may change the design and use it as you want. You may download pdf versions of the (draft) Users Manual and Hardware Reference on http://www.liab.dk

    The LIAB board now runs both version 2.0.36 and 2.2.14 of the Linux kernel. At least ten different extension boards have been designed for the 64 pins I/O connector: a 12 bit A/D card, a relay/optoisolated I/O card, an MP3 player using the STA013 MP3 decoder chip, an IDE harddisk interface, an HPIB interface and a floppy interface. We are working on an simple USB host interface these days. The board is considere ideal for educational purposes.

    Mikael Dich, midi@www.liab.dk

  • phpGroupWare
    until (succeed) try { again(); }
  • Perhaps power consumption is an issue? (Especially if you live in California)
  • Just don't let your system have a credit card number or you may find it taking over your apartment today, and the world tomorrow....

    At least this would be a lot more colourful than the "grey goo" of nano-tech gone wrong :)


    __

  • That's why I made a free firewall [dubbele.com] that runs off hard disk - sure, it can be done from floppy, but I consider them too failure prone...

    -John
  • What about us poor folk with sub +1 bonus karma? Do the normal folks still have variable karma?
  • Yup - but if you're user #7423, why don't you have the bonus? Anyway, if you whore yourself up to 50 points, then your karma gets stuck.
  • it amazes me that you have no idea what communism is. read/learn/listen before you talk

    -thinkpol

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