[Box Backup] embedded

[Ben Summers]

On 2 Jun 2005, at 06:42, dm wrote:

> Maybe I'm masochistic or something, but before I go treading into  
> unknown territory, I was just wondering if anyone has looked at  
> getting a server up and running on any sort of embedded device.   
> Specifically I'm looking at the linksys nslu2 nas with the custom  
> unslung firmware(http://www.nslu2-linux.org).  They have a pretty  
> decent howto document on implementing packages into unslung, but I  
> know very little of these programming languages(I'm more of a perl/ 
> shell monkey).
>
> I already have boxbackup setup on a p3 350 + 1 terabyte raid array  
> dedicated to backing up 4 machines, and have noticed that as a  
> server it does use a good chunk of processor while it is backing  
> up, and am wondering how the nslu2 would handle this.  snmp graphs  
> at http://209.40.166.42/hotsanic/  It's the machine at 192.168.10.9.
>
> Basically, you could have a server up and running without having to  
> dedicate an entire machine to it, and it would take up very little  
> space/generate very little heat.

As a first go, have you tried compiling it natively?

    http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/HowTo/NativelyCompileUnslungPackages

You're right, it is an interesting prospect to produce a tiny backup  
appliance. The server doesn't actually need much in the way of CPU,  
as the client does the really hard work. Your graphs don't indicate a  
huge amount of work, a reasonable embedded processor will be fine.

Ben