The Slug
My needs for a home server are simple: always on, accessible from anywhere, a shell that allows me to be permanently on using screen in order to store data and backups, run irssi for IRC, bitlbee for IM, and a few other text-based applications. Since I currently have no desktop PC at home I was about to buy a linux box to get the above, when I was told about Linksys’ Network Storage Link Unit (aka NSLU2, aka The Slug), a cute little machine that connects to your local network and to which you can plug USB storage devices so that other computers on the network can access them.
It’s in fact a tiny linux box, but that’s pretty much invisible, since you only access it through a web or an ftp interface. However, a bunch of enthusiasts are developing replacement firmware that runs a much enhanced version of linux. In fact, a complete Debian distro can be installed. I opted for the simpler unslug, which still has hundreds of packages, including the ones I need.
And it works really well! In 2 hours I had everything installed and am now delighted my home server cost me only 95 euros.
I wasn’t bothered taking a picture of my Slug myself, so I borrowed the one above (from here), which shows how small it is. And quiet too. Now I hope that it’s stable and doesn’t run out of memory too soon (it’s imminent, though: running ssh, screen, irssi, stunnel and bitlbee already eats up 90% of the 32MB RAM).
[tags] nslu2, linux, linksys [/tags]