[wplug] Linksys NSLU2

[James O'Kane]

On Fri, 18 Aug 2006, DK wrote:

> I am considering purchase of an Linksys NSLU2 to host my data backup external 
> HD.  I have nearly 70GB of data on the NTFS formatted drive, and all of the 
> documentation for the NSLU2 mfg firmware say that the device will reformat 
> the disk to ext3.  Will one of the community firmware builds allow me to 
> retain the NTFS partition, allowing me to swap the drive between the NSLU2 
> and my Windows box?
>
> Also, how does the NSLU2 handle a external HD having multiple FAT32 
> partitions?

I did some quick testing with the linksys firmware and the unslung 
firmware. With an NTFS formatted drive, linksys didn't see it at all, but 
the unslug was fine with it. With a disk containing 2 1gig FAT32 
partitions. Both firmwares seemed to be okay with that and shared them via 
samba.
A note about both firmwares, they need an ext3 partition to enable groups 
and probably other features. The unslung firmware needs the partition to 
'unsling' to. unsling'ing is the process of copying the flash to the drive 
and using that as the primary root partition. The builtin flash is fairly 
small and installing any extra packages to the unslung firmware without a 
drive will fill the flash and brick your nslu2.

I haven't tested this with the openslug nor the debian slug firmware.

-james