Spec me a low power hackable NAS

BunnyKillBot

BunnyKillBot

BunnyKillBot

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20 Jun 2010
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My Western Digital MyBook Live 2TB has served me well but lately I have been experimenting around with the software, and I find myself frustrated that big companies are pretty poor at keeping their embedded systems up to date. Obviously, it makes no sense to work on software for a product they have already sold 'as-is' that 'works' with no expectation of any financial return.

The MBL is an 800MZ APM82181 PowerPC 44x Platform running a 2009 version of U-Boot, 2010 Linux kernel 2.6.32.11 and a messed up custom debian distribution which is pretty much impossible to update with apt-get because of dependancy issues. I have looked into updating U-Boot and booting anything else up to date, but it's beyond my learning, expertise and device specific headaches. I would rather find a new NAS that will do what I want, rather than do battle with something resistant to my aims.

SO, it must be low power, ( very low power. No multi bay super servers please :P Basically just a board with CPU, ethernet and 1 sata port which is what the MBL is) and either have a reliable update schedule or be suitably hackable to allow for a custom OS without too much of a headache. Doth anything of such ability exist?
 
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Hi neil_g, thank you for response, however in an effort to recycle old technology and learn more about the linux kernel, I have decided to focus on messing around with the MBL for now. Western digital conveniently provided the sources, so I am learning as I go about kernel hacking and trying to build the latest linux kernel, with board specific device drivers intact, and a minimalist package distribution.

I got a USB to UART shifter to hook into the terminal. I am hoping to leave UBoot intact to do debugging over the UART, because the UART pinouts were available online, but the JTAG pinouts for direct access if I break it are harder.

Embedded Linux Development is fun :D



So i guess the corrected follow up question is, what is a good low power, linux based NAS with good source material.
 
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