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Re: Debian (Linux) on Router hardware



A few weeks ago there were a couple of stories on Slashdot about how Linksys were using Linux in their routers but did not appear to be meeting all conditions of the GPL (i.e. releasing source code). Among the postings were instructions on how to unpack a Linksys firmware download and mount it as a Linux file system so the binaries could be checked.

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/08/1749217&mode=thread&tid=117&tid=137&tid=193&tid=99
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/09/0111209&mode=thread&tid=109&tid=167&tid=187&tid=99
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/06/2121234&mode=thread&tid=117&tid=137&tid=193&tid=99
http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/31/1350217&mode=thread&tid=106&tid=117&tid=137&tid=185&tid=193&tid=99

Maybe there is more information in those stories. This might be the first step to reverse engineering these products to make it possible to load them with custom firmware.

--rick

Torsten Schlabach wrote:

Dear list,

I am not entirely sure I am asking the right community for some help, but
let's try.

A lot of people (including myself) have a need for *cheap* simple diskless
hassle-free networking appliances that might be used as webservers, VPN
routers or whatever services that might be offered on a network using a box that
has no more than limited CPU power (some ARM or MIPS CPU), some RAM and some
Flash file system.

There is a lot of those boxes available designed as "embedded linux
controllers" and the like, but they often get more expensive than a full-fledged PC
which is not the purpose. (At least not for my project.)

Therefore I wonder if anyone ever did any work to use Linux on a device such
as the popular DSL routers you can get anywhere for about 100 USD. In my
view they should have all the hardware you need and they support flashing a new
operating software into them. My guess would be they are some sort of ARM or
MIPS architecture so this should be doable.

Any thoughts or pointers to any projects? I just don't know where to start.

Kind regards,
Torsten
--
Rick Low
Ottawa, Canada
rDOTlowATcomputerDOTorg





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