Perfect NAS? Another point of view, eBox-2300SX
About a month ago, I came to the conclusion that I needed a NAS. For what? It's simple - I wanted to download torrents regardless of the main computer. Ie, I scored downloads in the queue and do what you want with the main computer - let the NAS work. Immediately the question arose - and what, actually, to take?
I defined for myself the relative criteria:
- price up to 5000 rubles
- noiselessness
- functionality
- small size
Walking through the range of available models, I realized one very important thing - at a price of up to 5,000 rubles, not a single NAS can sanely download torrents. First of all, because the hardware platform of these models is very weak, and torrents are known for their voracity (with respect to direct data transfer).
And if you add the cost of a hard disk to this, it becomes absolutely not good at all.
And then I became interested in thin clients.
Thin clients, of course, are not intended to organize a NAS at all. Such machines are used mainly for users through the terminal. Having studied the possible options, I settled on the Vortex86SX platform, produced by Taiwanese company DM & P.
This platform is used in the eBox-2300SX thin client model .
')
Specifications:
Processor - x86-compatible MSTI PSX-300, 366 MHz
Memory - 128MB DDR2
Video - XGI Z9S with 32MB DDR2
USB 2.0 port - x3
Type I / II Compact Flash slot - x1
10 / 100Mbps LAN port - x1
PS / 2 port - x1
Passive cooling, dimensions 115 x 115 x 35 mm.
There are several eBox-2300SX models. Of these, it is worth highlighting these:
SX - standard version with all of the above - $ 140
SX-H - standard version with 2.5 HDD connectivity - $ 160
SX-M - standard version with mini-PCI slot - $ 160
Picked up at home, I found a 250GB Transcend usb-hard from Transcend wallowing around. Therefore, it was decided to take the standard model and save 20 bucks, and hard to connect via usb.
It is worth noting that in Russia both the eBox-2300SX and its clones are sold, for example Norma-TS 36D and WTPRO Easy2Use . They cost a little more.
The decision is made - I order, pay and wait. In parallel, I buy a 4GB CF card from Transcend for 600 rubles to install the system.
Now about the bad - the MSTI PSX-300 processor does not have FPU. In general, this processor is a clone of Intel 486SX with a significantly increased frequency. So far, not all operating systems will be able to work on it. The developer officially declares the support of three systems - WinCE, DOS and Linux. By itself, the first two are of no interest. DM & P introduces its own version of Linux - X-Linux .
Here is a brief list of its components:
Kernel 2.6.24
Shell - BusyBox
FTPD - vsftpd
HTTPD - WN Server
SSHD - Dropbear
It is clear that this is not going away. There is no package manager, not even standard gcc / g ++ and make. However, the developer positions it only as a basis for building anything. From this we will make a start.
For the sake of justice, I must say that on eBox-2300SX it’s quite possible to launch any Linux distribution at all. To do this, you just need to build the kernel with the parameter CONFIG_MATH_EMULATION = y :) However, modern adult distributions are not a bit designed for use in conditions of a small amount of memory and a weak processor. Therefore, and only therefore, I decided to bring X-Linux to mind. But more about that later.
Here it is, the cherished box.
And here is the eBox itself.
Everything is as stated, though I could not imagine that it is really so small.
Grade just amazing. The eBox itself, an adapter to it, and 4 bolts for VESA mounting. It's all. Saved even on paper, no manuals or warranty coupons. Well, yes, in principle, perhaps it is not so important.
First of all I climb inside. There are no seals on the way, so you can safely open. The cap sits on four long bolts, nothing else needs to be unscrewed.
Interesting ... Everything is so small and so healthy battery. I look at the bottom:
Opa ... Port for connecting HDD. Very interesting. It turns out an additional $ 20 paid for the cable to connect? Looking ahead, I will say that in the BIOS this port is freely configurable. Probably in the modification of the SX-H just added a cable for connection and the bottom cover is made removable, for a more convenient connection.
Another interesting thing is the small lever near the CF slot, which serves to determine the CF card. He has two positions - Master and Slave.
It is also worth considering that anyone can easily unsolder another USB port and two full COM ports.
Bios is standard and low-functional. In some sections there are some interesting options that I have never come across before. But there is no manual and find out what they do only in an empirical way. I didn’t do it, everything works out of the box.
Getting to install the OS. DM & P honestly warns that for the "installation" it is better to use image recovery via Symantec / Norton Ghost. We connect the CF card to the main computer via a card reader and in 3 clicks we restore the image to the CF card (Local> Disk> From image). The main thing is not to make a mistake in choosing the destination disk.
Well, now insert the CF-card into the appropriate slot on the eBox and you can boot.
Loading time pleases - it takes about 12 seconds from power up to full load.
The default login and password is root: password.
And now the fun begins - you need to make this NAS out of it.
I chose the ZenWalk 5.2 Core distribution as a donor, mainly for two reasons:
- ZenWalk is based on Slackware and all the packages in it are built under i486, which is just suitable for the eBox platform
- I found his image on my screw :)
The first thing I put the following:
autoconf
automake
bash
binutils
cvs
cxxxlibs
db44
dialog
expat
g ++
gcc
gdbm
gettext
gettext-tools
glib
glibc
gzip
libtermcap
m4
make
ncurses
netpkg
openssl
perl
perl-pvfilter
pkgtools
python
readline
sed
tar
zlib
It had to be done with pens of its own accord, but with standard Slakovski packages in tgz, this is not particularly difficult. By the time it took me about an hour.
Everything, now you can safely use netpkg to install everything your heart desires. With the ability to compile, I broke off a bit. The processor is so weak that even the mc was going for about an hour. If there is no hurry, this is not a problem. I preferred to build software under ZenWalk in VMWare on the main computer.
Yusb devices are seen and so. I could easily connect my usb-hard and usb-dvd.
We put samba and transmission with a web interface:
netpkg samba
netpkg transmission
Customize, everything is as usual. Add both (smbd, nmbd, transmission-daemon) to /etc/init.d/rcS for autoloading. There is no service manager in X-Linux, and I decided not to bother and do what they suggest.
That's basically all - I got what I wanted - a silent and small rocking torrent with the possibility of unlimited expansion of the functionality. Loading time from the moment of start with all services - ~ 20 seconds. The transfer speed through samba, on condition of downloading and distributing about 10-15 torrents - 5-6 Mb / s, is quite enough for me. In addition, about 100 MB of RAM is still free. Just a fairy tale.
I think it’s quite realistic to put on the eBox and the notorious FreeNAS if you can rebuild its core with support for FPU emulation. Unfortunately in freeBSD I am not strong, so I don’t know if this is actually possible. And I don’t need all the functionality of FreeNAS.
Also, it seems to me, after a similar finish, it will be possible to install the eBox platform . Ebox on ebox, it will be great :)
In addition, there is also the usual eBox-3200 , without the SX prefix. The configuration there is about the same, with one weighty exception - the processor has FPU, which means no tweaks will be needed. Only one thing - this model is a bit more expensive and more difficult to find.
Thank you for your attention, I hope not only I want to get what I really need for the sane price and this material will be useful for someone.
Useful links:
X-Linux manual
Ethernet controller driver
PuppyLinux launch topic on eBox-2300SX
PS Taking this opportunity, I wantto say hello to say thanks to the people thanks to whom I ended up on a habr.
I defined for myself the relative criteria:
- price up to 5000 rubles
- noiselessness
- functionality
- small size
Walking through the range of available models, I realized one very important thing - at a price of up to 5,000 rubles, not a single NAS can sanely download torrents. First of all, because the hardware platform of these models is very weak, and torrents are known for their voracity (with respect to direct data transfer).
And if you add the cost of a hard disk to this, it becomes absolutely not good at all.
And then I became interested in thin clients.
Thin clients, of course, are not intended to organize a NAS at all. Such machines are used mainly for users through the terminal. Having studied the possible options, I settled on the Vortex86SX platform, produced by Taiwanese company DM & P.
This platform is used in the eBox-2300SX thin client model .
')
Specifications:
Processor - x86-compatible MSTI PSX-300, 366 MHz
Memory - 128MB DDR2
Video - XGI Z9S with 32MB DDR2
USB 2.0 port - x3
Type I / II Compact Flash slot - x1
10 / 100Mbps LAN port - x1
PS / 2 port - x1
Passive cooling, dimensions 115 x 115 x 35 mm.
There are several eBox-2300SX models. Of these, it is worth highlighting these:
SX - standard version with all of the above - $ 140
SX-H - standard version with 2.5 HDD connectivity - $ 160
SX-M - standard version with mini-PCI slot - $ 160
Picked up at home, I found a 250GB Transcend usb-hard from Transcend wallowing around. Therefore, it was decided to take the standard model and save 20 bucks, and hard to connect via usb.
It is worth noting that in Russia both the eBox-2300SX and its clones are sold, for example Norma-TS 36D and WTPRO Easy2Use . They cost a little more.
The decision is made - I order, pay and wait. In parallel, I buy a 4GB CF card from Transcend for 600 rubles to install the system.
Now about the bad - the MSTI PSX-300 processor does not have FPU. In general, this processor is a clone of Intel 486SX with a significantly increased frequency. So far, not all operating systems will be able to work on it. The developer officially declares the support of three systems - WinCE, DOS and Linux. By itself, the first two are of no interest. DM & P introduces its own version of Linux - X-Linux .
Here is a brief list of its components:
Kernel 2.6.24
Shell - BusyBox
FTPD - vsftpd
HTTPD - WN Server
SSHD - Dropbear
It is clear that this is not going away. There is no package manager, not even standard gcc / g ++ and make. However, the developer positions it only as a basis for building anything. From this we will make a start.
For the sake of justice, I must say that on eBox-2300SX it’s quite possible to launch any Linux distribution at all. To do this, you just need to build the kernel with the parameter CONFIG_MATH_EMULATION = y :) However, modern adult distributions are not a bit designed for use in conditions of a small amount of memory and a weak processor. Therefore, and only therefore, I decided to bring X-Linux to mind. But more about that later.
Here it is, the cherished box.
And here is the eBox itself.
Everything is as stated, though I could not imagine that it is really so small.
Grade just amazing. The eBox itself, an adapter to it, and 4 bolts for VESA mounting. It's all. Saved even on paper, no manuals or warranty coupons. Well, yes, in principle, perhaps it is not so important.
First of all I climb inside. There are no seals on the way, so you can safely open. The cap sits on four long bolts, nothing else needs to be unscrewed.
Interesting ... Everything is so small and so healthy battery. I look at the bottom:
Opa ... Port for connecting HDD. Very interesting. It turns out an additional $ 20 paid for the cable to connect? Looking ahead, I will say that in the BIOS this port is freely configurable. Probably in the modification of the SX-H just added a cable for connection and the bottom cover is made removable, for a more convenient connection.
Another interesting thing is the small lever near the CF slot, which serves to determine the CF card. He has two positions - Master and Slave.
It is also worth considering that anyone can easily unsolder another USB port and two full COM ports.
Bios is standard and low-functional. In some sections there are some interesting options that I have never come across before. But there is no manual and find out what they do only in an empirical way. I didn’t do it, everything works out of the box.
Getting to install the OS. DM & P honestly warns that for the "installation" it is better to use image recovery via Symantec / Norton Ghost. We connect the CF card to the main computer via a card reader and in 3 clicks we restore the image to the CF card (Local> Disk> From image). The main thing is not to make a mistake in choosing the destination disk.
Well, now insert the CF-card into the appropriate slot on the eBox and you can boot.
Loading time pleases - it takes about 12 seconds from power up to full load.
The default login and password is root: password.
And now the fun begins - you need to make this NAS out of it.
I chose the ZenWalk 5.2 Core distribution as a donor, mainly for two reasons:
- ZenWalk is based on Slackware and all the packages in it are built under i486, which is just suitable for the eBox platform
- I found his image on my screw :)
The first thing I put the following:
autoconf
automake
bash
binutils
cvs
cxxxlibs
db44
dialog
expat
g ++
gcc
gdbm
gettext
gettext-tools
glib
glibc
gzip
libtermcap
m4
make
ncurses
netpkg
openssl
perl
perl-pvfilter
pkgtools
python
readline
sed
tar
zlib
It had to be done with pens of its own accord, but with standard Slakovski packages in tgz, this is not particularly difficult. By the time it took me about an hour.
Everything, now you can safely use netpkg to install everything your heart desires. With the ability to compile, I broke off a bit. The processor is so weak that even the mc was going for about an hour. If there is no hurry, this is not a problem. I preferred to build software under ZenWalk in VMWare on the main computer.
Yusb devices are seen and so. I could easily connect my usb-hard and usb-dvd.
We put samba and transmission with a web interface:
netpkg samba
netpkg transmission
Customize, everything is as usual. Add both (smbd, nmbd, transmission-daemon) to /etc/init.d/rcS for autoloading. There is no service manager in X-Linux, and I decided not to bother and do what they suggest.
That's basically all - I got what I wanted - a silent and small rocking torrent with the possibility of unlimited expansion of the functionality. Loading time from the moment of start with all services - ~ 20 seconds. The transfer speed through samba, on condition of downloading and distributing about 10-15 torrents - 5-6 Mb / s, is quite enough for me. In addition, about 100 MB of RAM is still free. Just a fairy tale.
I think it’s quite realistic to put on the eBox and the notorious FreeNAS if you can rebuild its core with support for FPU emulation. Unfortunately in freeBSD I am not strong, so I don’t know if this is actually possible. And I don’t need all the functionality of FreeNAS.
Also, it seems to me, after a similar finish, it will be possible to install the eBox platform . Ebox on ebox, it will be great :)
In addition, there is also the usual eBox-3200 , without the SX prefix. The configuration there is about the same, with one weighty exception - the processor has FPU, which means no tweaks will be needed. Only one thing - this model is a bit more expensive and more difficult to find.
Thank you for your attention, I hope not only I want to get what I really need for the sane price and this material will be useful for someone.
Useful links:
X-Linux manual
Ethernet controller driver
PuppyLinux launch topic on eBox-2300SX
PS Taking this opportunity, I want
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/62902/
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