Firmware 6.0.8 just became available for the x86 based Netgear NASes. Interestingly enough, it is called “firmware” version, but to me (and others familiar with electronics and embedded systems) a firmware is low-level software running directly on the CPU/MCU. Maybe there are such components in the Netgear firmware too, but most part seems to be just updates to the NAS’ Linux environment (or more specifically: to the Debian Wheezy packages).
Anyway, that’s mainly semantics. My worry was that the upgrade would overwrite the 3rd party software I had previously installed (htop, tmux and CrashPlan).
Turns out there was no need to worry. All three works flawlessly also after the “firmware” upgrade. Nice.
Just a quick post on how easy it is to set up the invaluable htop package on the Netgear RN312. For those not familiar with htop, it’s a super-powered process monitor, way way better than the old legacy top command. Nice stuff, must have.
Turns out the pre-built package for htop is borked though (apt-get install htop fails) . Bummer. Time to pull out the command line magic..
ssh into the NAS, then set up a build environment and a couple of dependencies. Compile and install (set the debconf to dialog and medium level):
Edit: Installing according to the instructions below works, but it does place CrashPlan’s log and cache files on the very size constrained root partition of the ReadyNas. Especially the cache files will quickly fill that partition of you have lots of files. It is however easy to move those cache and log files to a better location, so once done with the instructions below, check out this post for details on how to move cache and log.
I’ve been using CrashPlan for a couple of years now, it’s a great service. In particular I like the peer-to-peer backup feature, where I can configure my parents’ (or friends) computer to back up to my small headless server during the night, making sure they don’t loose their pictures due to some unfortunate keyboard sequence.. The paid-for service is very reasonably priced too, giving me unlimited backup space for $4.79/month, given a 2-year signup period. Nice.
The downside is that you must keep your computer on at all times. Sure, that might be fine, but given that I try to reduce the carbon (and energy, in general) footprint around here, I’d rather put my computers in sleep or hibernation when not used. The one exception I am willing to make is a good NAS, and possibly also a jump host that will give me ssh access to my home network. Maybe the two combined in a single server – or the jump host in a very small and low power server. Anyway, after years of trying out different setups, mainly focused around a) my iMac with an external USB drive, and b) headless servers (I have all of the Bubba servers, http://www.excitostore.com/sv/frontpage, awesome servers, but even the B3 is today slightly underpowered. Tough challenge keeping up with all the new hardware architectures coming to market. So when the Atom powered dual core Netgear RN 312 was announced it seemed like a nice platform. The java powered CrashPlan application should not be a problem (others have successfully installed it on other x86 powered Netgear NAS:es), it supposedly also nicely handles lots of UPS:es, including (I hope!!) the slightly uncommon Bluewalker UPS that I use. Anyway, getting CrashPlan up and running on the ReadyNAS was top prio. Turned out that some changes were needed, compared to the walk-throughs for earlier ReadyNAS versions. First, the usual disclaimer: One or more of the suggestions in this blog post and related posts on this blog may very well void the warranty of your NAS devices. So. Enough. Given the risk of myself having to re-do this at a later date, or for the benefit of others having the desire for the same setup, here we go:
www.shasam.net has been invaluably helpful, providing general ideas on how to approach CrashPlan on ReadyNAS:es. Still, as the instructions there doesn’t work for the RN312 series, I feel it might be useful with some additional comments.
On the RN312 (using the standard web UI), create a share named “Crashplan”. It will be stored under /data/Crashplan Enable ssh root access (once again, using the standard UI).
ssh into the NAS, using something like ssh root@192.168.1.x, adjust the IP address as needed. Use the pwd of the admin user, that you set when configuring the NAS.
create a working directory, I use /root/dl (as in “download”):
[code language=”css”]
cd
mkdir dl
cd dl
[/code]
Get CrashPlan (adjust as needed to get latest version): [code language=”css”]
wget http://download.crashplan.com/installs/linux/install/CrashPlan/CrashPlan_3.5.3_Linux.tgz tar -xvzf CrashPlan_3.5.3_Linux.tgz
[/code]
You need to install some packages to get things working: [code language=”css”]
apt-get install dialog
dpkg-reconfigure debconf
[/code]
Set the debconf level to “dialog” and “medium”. It turns out the pre-installed version of cpio doesn’t quite cut it.. Replace it: [code language=”css”]
apt-get remove busybox-cpio
apt-get install cpio
[/code]
With Java installed and some environment changes in place, time to install CrashPlan: [code language=”css”]
cd /CrashPlan-install
./install.sh
[/code]
Just press enter to use the default settings, except for where to store the CrashPlan data. Full conversation follows (with EULA slightly shortened). Also, line breaks were lost in copy-paste process, so what’s shown on screen probably differs a bit from the below: [code language=”css”]
Welcome to the CrashPlan Installer.
Press enter to continue with installation.
Validating environment… detected root permissions 49581 blocks
You must review and agree to the EULA before installation. Press enter to read the EULA.
<EULA>
Do you accept and agree to be bound by the EULA? (yes/no) yes
What directory do you wish to install CrashPlan to? [/usr/local/crashplan]
What directory do you wish to link the CrashPlan executable to? [/usr/local/bin]
What directory do you wish to store backups in? [/usr/local/var/crashplan] /data/Crashplan
What directory contains your SYSV init scripts? [/etc/init.d]
What directory contains your runlevel init links? [/etc/rc5.d]
Your selections:
CrashPlan will install to: /usr/local/crashplan
And put links to binaries in: /usr/local/bin
And store datas in: /data/Crashplan
Your init.d dir is: /etc/init.d
Your current runlevel directory is: /etc/rc5.d
Is this correct? (y/n) [y]
Unpacking /
./CrashPlan_3.5.3.cpi … 49581 blocks
/usr/local/crashplan/bin/CrashPlanEngine: line 113: warning: setlocale: LC_CTYPE: cannot change locale (UTF-8.UTF-8): No such file or directory
Starting CrashPlan Engine …
Using standard startup OK
CrashPlan has been installed and the Service has been started automatically.
Press Enter to complete installation.
Important directories:
Installation: /usr/local/crashplan
Logs: /usr/local/crashplan/log
Default archive location: /data/Crashplan
You can run the CrashPlan Desktop UI locally as your own user or connect a remote Desktop UI to this Service via port-forwarding and manage it remotely. Instructions for remote management are in the readme files placed in your installation directory: /usr/local/crashplan/doc
To start the Desktop UI: /usr/local/bin/CrashPlanDesktop
Installation is complete. Thank you for installing CrashPlan for Linux.
root@RN312:~/dl/CrashPlan-install#
[/code]
Reset debconf to non-interactive (using “noninteractive” and “medium” as settings):
[code language=”css”]
dpkg-reconfigure debconf
[/code]
With this, it should be a smooth ride following the previously mentioned blog post to set up CrashPlan. Worked for me, a few hours later the RN312 has now backed up a few GB and progressing nicely. The full backup will take weeks or more, but that’s fine – the summer is long and I have other backups in place meanwhile.
A severely cracked 13″ Macbook Air display came my way some time back. The LCD panel was obviously damaged, but it would be interesting to see what makes such a great display tick, and maybe parts of it could still be used? I believe the display came from a Late 2010 Macbook Air (which would indicate an A1369 type construction), but can’t be sure. Anyway – ideas included
Keeping the back lighting (assuming it works) and camera, mounting the whole display on a flexible arm next to the work bench. Given the high intensity of the back lighting, it could then (maybe) provide ambient lighting AND video recording of whatever was being worked on. Maybe with a LED light and camera on a separate flexible arms.
If the LED backlighting drivers were toast, there should still be some nice white LEDs in there for scavenging.
Same thing for the camera, I believe it to be a 640×480 pixel device, nothing too exiting but could still be useful.
Turns out it’s not entirely easy to disassemble these displays. They are sealed together with very strong tape. Heating the bezel helps a lot, but it’s still a fair amount of work – and given the delicate components beneath the bezel, you might want to think twice before doing this on a laptop you care about.. Some good instructions found here, btw. Results so far:
Prying the bezel open…
…before applying heat with a hot-air SMD rework station (regular heat gun would probably also work, if you are careful):
Voila! Bezel is free:
Now the tricky part. The cable from the cable is a thin wire with some kind of textile cover, for strengths I assume. It goes through the hinges and there is no way (as far as I can tell) to get the cable through there, without cutting off the (very small) connector that normally connects to the computers Left I/O (a.k.a. LIO) board. Cut.
Now the whole camera assembly can be removed. It also includes the ambient light sensor, which communicates over I2C. Unknown protocol for that one though – one for the future to investigate..
Very tiny 6-pin connector, normally going to the LIO board. Camera module exposed in the top part of the screen. Held in place with 2 small screws.
Camera board.
These things are small – fingers included for scale reference.
With six wires in the cable it’s pretty clear that 4 are for USB (+5V, Gnd, Data+, Data-) and 2 for I2C. That cable is however crazy small – it’s about 2 mm diameter. Once the outer layer is off, you see 6 even thinner cables. 2 are black, 4 transparent. Which ones are which?
Google is your friend. Turns out there are schematics to be found if you Google long enough. Turns out you need schematics for the LIO board though, in order to get the pinout of the camera/ALS cable, and it’s nowhere to be found for the A1369. Did find a schematic for the A1370 model though (same computer but 11″ screen), with a bit of luck that cable is the same between models.
The 2 black ones are prime candidates for +5V and Gnd. Cutting away the insulation revealed that the cables are shielded, with a center wire that is barely visible to the eye. It took several attempts before I had separated the wires from the sheilding, and then done the same with the other 4 wires. Soldering these onto an old USB cable was then easy (but ugly!!):
Still, it doesn’t work. The camera is not recognised on an iMac with latest OSX, nor on a Windows 8 laptop. Happened to have a Raspberry Pi lying on the work bench, tried it too with same result: nothing.
But wait… doing a “tail -f /var/log/messages” on the RPi showed that it DID recognise the camera, but that the camera wanted more power than a non-powered USB hub could provide! Placing the camera into the RPi’s regular USB port made it appear nicely when doing a “lsusb” command.
Still, it didn’t work when I connected the camera to the Windows or iMac machines – strange.
Also, the RPi loose contact with the camera after a while – no idea why. Could maybe be a bad USB cable (it’s from an old mouse using USB 1.1 – maybe that’s a problem??), or is there too much noise introduced by the ugly splicing of cables that I’ve done? No idea… More investigation needed. Anyway, the camera enumerates with USB id 05ac:850a, which indeed is an Apple FaceTime camera – nice!
If you spend any time at all at the command prompt in OSX or other Linux-ish systems, tmux is a must. Basically it gives you persistent shell sessions, once using it you’ll wonder how you ever got by without it…
For OSX the easiest way to get tmux is via (the also excellent) Homebrew. After installing Homebrew, just do a
brew install tmux
from a OSX prompt (you ARE using iTerm2, right? …Rather than OSX’s rather horrible built-in Terminal app…?)
Add to the mix the nice Bash replacement Fish, which gives you all sorts of command line goodness (color coding, auto-completion, …). Very nice!
There are various replacements for the traditional screen command in Linux, Byobu and tmux being two good ones. Byobu is good, but after trying tmux on various Linux machines I really wanted it also on the bubba2.
As tmux doesn’t seems to be in the bubba2 or etch repositories, the next option is to build it from source. Below follow some ideas for doing this.
Note: you may need to install/upgrade gcc and other tools to complete the steps below, if you have a standard, out-of-the-box bubba2 system.
Switch to su and create a directory for source & resulting binaries
su
mkdir ~/project
cd ~/project
Compile proper libevent version tmux needs a more recent version of libevent than installed as part of bubba2 standard setup. First remove current libevent, then compile the new one:
apt-get remove libevent1
mkdir ~/project/libevent
cd ~/project/libevent
wget http://monkey.org/~provos/libevent-1.4.14b-stable.tar.gz
gunzip libevent-1.4.14b-stable.tar.gz
tar xvf libevent-1.4.14b-stable.tar
cd libevent-1.4.14b-stable
./configure
make
make install
Register the new libevent
Edit /etc/ld.so.conf.d/powerpc-linux-gnu.conf, e.g. by “vim /etc/ld.so.conf.d/powerpc-linux-gnu.conf”, add the line “/usr/local/lib/” (no quotes) at the end.
Reload the new libevent
Simply run “ldconfig”.
Compile and install tmux
mkdir ~/project/tmux
cd ~/project/tmux
wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/tmux/tmux/tmux-1.5/tmux-1.5.tar.gz
gunzip http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/tmux/tmux/tmux-1.5/tmux-1.5.tar.gz
tar xvf http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/tmux/tmux/tmux-1.5/tmux-1.5.tar
cd tmux-1.5
./configure
make
make install
Configure tmux and start using it
First, exit from superuser mode by typing “exit”. Then, you probably want to customize tmux, try googling “tmux config file” or similar for samples. I currently use the following:# Make it use C-a, similar to screen..
unbind C-b
unbind l
set -g prefix C-a
bind-key C-a last-window
# key bindings for splitting
unbind %
bind | split-window -h
bind h split-window -h
unbind ‘”‘
bind – split-window -v
bind v split-window -v# Reload key
bind r source-file ~/.tmux.conf#set -g default-terminal “screen-256color”
set -g default-terminal “xterm”
set -g history-limit 4096
# Terminal emulator window title
set -g set-titles on
set -g set-titles-string ‘#S:#I.#P #W’# THEME
set -g status-bg black
set -g status-fg white
set -g status-interval 60
set -g status-left-length 30
set -g status-left ‘#[fg=green](#S) #(whoami)@#H#[default]’
# set -g status-right ‘#[fg=yellow]#(cut -d ” ” -f 1-3 /proc/loadavg)#[default] #[fg=blue]%H:%M#[default]’
set -g status-right-length 75
set -g status-right ‘#[fg=red]Up #(uptime | cut -f 4-5 -d ” ” | cut -f 1 -d “,”) #[fg=black]#[fg=yellow]#(cut -d ” ” -f 1-4 /proc/loadavg) #[fg=cyan,bold]%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%
S#[default]’
Start using tmux
“tmux” starts tmux. Now you can create new windows/panes, and kill the sessions whenever you want. When you reconnect to the bubba2 over ssh, just type tmux attach and you can continue where you left off.
