$100 Linux Wall-Wart Now Available 464
nerdyH sends us to LinuxDevices for a description of a tiny Linux device called the Marvell SheevaPlug. "A $100 Linux wall wart could do to servers what netbooks did to notebooks. With the Marvell SheevaPlug, you get a completely open (hardware and software) Linux server resembling a typical wall-wart power adapter, but running Linux on a 1.2GHz CPU, with 512MB of RAM, and 512MB of Flash. I/O includes USB 2.0, gigabit Ethernet, while expansion is provided via an SDIO slot. The power draw is a nightlight-like 5 Watts. Marvell says it plans to give Linux developers everything they need to deliver 'disruptive' services on the device." The article links four products built on the SheevaPlug, none of them shipping quite yet. The development kit is available from Marvell.
Did anyone else read this as (Score:5, Funny)
$100 Linux Wall-Mart now available? That would be cool.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, I was wondering what in the hell it was. -sigh- End of a long day.
Re:Did anyone else read this as (Score:5, Interesting)
Nope, it's that Wall-Wart is too close to our conditioned recognition of Wal-Mart. Your brain has too much crap to do to read every letter of every word, and try to puzzle things out...It uses a sort of constant shape/context interpolation. That's why misspelled words don't prevent you from understanding what the word is supposed to be.
If they'd spelled it correctly (e.g. "wall wart") without the caps and hyphen, it wouldn't have fallen into the same framework, and everyone wouldn't have read it and gone, "Linux Wal-Mart? WTF?"
Re:Did anyone else read this as (Score:5, Insightful)
If they'd spelled it correctly (e.g. "wall wart") without the caps and hyphen, it wouldn't have fallen into the same framework, and everyone wouldn't have read it and gone, "Linux Wal-Mart? WTF?"
The insidious kdawson strikes again.
Re:Did anyone else read this as (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Did anyone else read this as (Score:5, Funny)
I hope they sell them at Wal-mart. A Wal-mart Wall-Wart would be cool!
Imagine a beowolf cluster of OW!! OW!! STOP HITTING ME!!!
Re:Did anyone else read this as (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Did anyone else read this as (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Did anyone else read this as (Score:5, Interesting)
Imagine a beowolf cluster of...
No joke. If they come out with a Gig of memory, I'll buy 20 or so and set up my own compute farm. I'd really like to get my hand on a sample and a cross-compiler to see what 1.2 GHz ARM means for my application...
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Twenty computers the size of wall worts plugged into four power strips?
Damn, that is cute computing. If it didn't cost $2k to do, it'd be something I'd do right now. Think of the bragging rights: "Yeah, this mid-tower? it's got 20, 1.2GHz cores with 10Gb of RAM."
Though, personally, I'd probably just nail the power strips on a piece of plywood and display them in the living room...
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yeah, it took several tries before I read it as wall-wart.
Mirror here (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.networkmirror.com/MuDp_g5XY_ZJoCQZ/linuxdevices.com/news/NS9634061300.html [networkmirror.com]
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Apparently Linux devices was running their site on this thing and it melted to the wall.
Ethernet (Score:4, Interesting)
Is it possible to also have the ethernet for this device go over the power lines like so many home networking devices? Then you could literally plug it and and have it running.
Re:Ethernet (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed. Either it needs BPL or it needs Wi-Fi. Most people don't put an ethernet jack wherever they have a power connection, making this somewhat less than ideal for home automation purposes. I'd also like to see it have a relay to switch on and off a power outlet, but maybe that's just me.
Either way, it's a cool little piece of hardware. I'm just not quite sure what I could use it for. It's too underpowered for video encoding/decoding, has no power switching capabilities needed for it to control lights, doesn't have the CPU power to replace my web server (a C2D takes several seconds to render an image with dcraw; this would take several minutes), etc. Maybe coupled with some outboard piece of USB gear, it might serve some obscure purpose like controlling a motor to open and close window shades/awnings for solar heating purposes, but it would still have to be enclosed in some sort of box to safely mount it outdoors....
I'll keep thinking. :-)
Re:Ethernet (Score:4, Insightful)
Torrents!
Actually not a bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Not torrents per se, but a dinky 100 computer sitting somewhere. Doing something...naughty.
If you get caught you're out 100 bucks. So what? Cheaper than an RIAA settlement letter, for instance.
Not that I'd ever advocate such behavior. Oh heavens no.
Re:Actually not a bad idea (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh no, I wasn't saying torrenting is sneaky. It isn't.
I was suggesting other nefarious uses. Like an open proxy that doesn't keep logs. Or a server for eMule. Or an icecast server with a public uploads folder - the modern day equivalent of pirate radio, just with audience participation. Or some other such thing.
Not that I'd ever advocate such behavior. Oh heavens no.
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Re:Ethernet (Score:5, Informative)
Are you kidding? Not enough CPU power? 1.2 GHz is enough for me to do raytracing!
Anyway, if you are going to do video encoding and translate your camera's pics from raw, it is not as if you need to sit and watch it. Just let the device run and do the work. 5 Watts isn't that much.
Kids these days.
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Back in the day, ftp.cdrom.com served ~1TB a day from 1 box, a 200-MHz P6 Pentium Pro.
(yeah yeah, ftp.cdrom.com had industrial quality I/O, but 1.2GHz is a LOT of computer power for anything but graphics.)
Re:Ethernet (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Ethernet (Score:5, Informative)
I suspect that products derived from this model will tend to have more in the way of peripherals; but as a dev kit that requires no special handling or equipment, and is priced within the range of virtually any student, linux hacker, or general tinkerer, this looks like a fun bit of kit. I know I'm tempted.
Re:Ethernet (Score:5, Informative)
"I'm just not quite sure what I could use it for. It's too underpowered for video encoding/decoding,"
It could probably do a bit of that, transcoding and serving anyway.
This sounds like an absolutely perfect replacement for my Linksys NSLU2. It's only 266MHz and has 32MB of RAM. At the moment I have one doing mail/web server duty and one running torrentflux-b4rt and mediatomb, streaming music and video to my PS3 and to my machine at work.
That second one is straining to keep up, this little box sounds like it fits the bill perfectly. Similarly powered NAS boxes cost multiple hundreds.
Re:Replace my NSLU2 (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't have a use for a webserver. But in your case why can't you prerender your images in the scales you need, and just have this device serve whichever image needed? You could save some considerable $ in power.
I have electricity within 3 feet of all my ethernet jacks. But the thought of using it as basically a network enabled X11 outlet
Re:Ethernet (Score:5, Interesting)
The obvious real solution is Power over Ethernet.
1 PoE capable switch.
+ 8 Wallwart Linux Devices
= 1 (not quite enterprise level) Server Farm in a shoe-box
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You would need two. I hate to break it to you but just plugging into into the powerline all by itself does not make it a networking device....
Re:Ethernet (Score:4, Interesting)
In the era of 802.11N, that is a retarded idea.
How much for a multi-ethernet-port version? (Score:5, Insightful)
This would be cool for a pocket-sized router, firewall, packet sniffer, etc.
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Other ideas:
Plane-carryable voip system
Tiny network sniffer
SSL based VPN gateway
Remote roomba controller
Mud-in-a-box
This reminds me a bit of apple's airport extreme. Tiny, versitile, Multi-function wall wart. Apple's, of course is quite limited in what it can do. Does anyone know if airport extreme is hacked to run custom software yet?
Re:How much for a multi-ethernet-port version? (Score:5, Funny)
Agreed. There are countless uses for something like this. 2009 will be the year of Linux in the outlet! ;-)
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Everything you need to make the home network a usable network, rather than a collection of machines accessing the internet.
Multiple ethernet ports would be nice, but as long as the cable modem can use USB, not as big a problem as it could be.
"Eventually, prices are expected to drop to around $49" Wow. That is cheap enough to buy just to play around with.
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I was thinking of an 8-port Belkin powerstrip full of these.
in a beowulf cluster.....
Power line networking (Score:5, Insightful)
From the linked page: "This device connects to the network using GbE"
Does it strike anybody else as strange that this device wouldn't have power line networking built in?
Re:Power line networking (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes and no. It would make sense for it to be capable of powerline networking, but you'll still need to ran a patch cable from the main network (be it router, cable modem/dsl box, whatever) to either this device (if it were powerline network capable) or another powerline network plugin device.
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It sucks, speeds on par with 802.11b, worse speeds as you add devices.
Plus power line networking adapter would likely add 4 watts of additional power requirements.
Power over Ethernet (Score:2, Offtopic)
I'm more interested in a version that supports PoE.
Re:Power over Ethernet (Score:5, Funny)
I'm more interested in a version that supports PoE.
That would be cool! Then you could add an inverter and power the outlet strip. ;-)
Re:Power over Ethernet (Score:5, Funny)
You, sir, are the reason they put warning labels on toothpicks. :)
Not a Power over Ethernet source... (Score:3, Interesting)
I think people are missing the point of this.
If you set this up as a power-over-ethernet device, you could have it powered from a PoE capable switch with only one wire going into it, no need to plug it into the wall.
Sounds like a great industrial espionage device! (Score:3, Interesting)
All you need to do is wrangle yourself an "interview" with a company, plug one of these unobtrusive babies into a wall outlet, attach a short patch cord to the nearest RJ45 data jack and you're off to the highest (competitor) bidder!
Re:Sounds like a great industrial espionage device (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sounds like a great industrial espionage device (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, he's got a point. If you can infiltrate the janitorial staff and can plug a two-ethernet-port version of this in between an important computer and a switch, you can sniff/analyze/record all unencrypted traffic until you run out of RAM.
Just be sure to remove it the next day before anyone notices.
Then again, an audio-recording device that recorded keystrokes or a keystroke-interceptor on the USB or PS2 ports is probably smaller.
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you can sniff/analyze/record all unencrypted traffic until you run out of RAM.
And if you can get away with opening an encrypted network connection to some drop box, you don't have to worry about RAM.
Just be sure to remove it the next day before anyone notices.
I suspect that in most places it could be there for months -- maybe years -- before anyone noticed. Make sure the drop isn't traceable to you and just collect the take as long as it goes unnoticed.
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I suspect that in most places it could be there for months -- maybe years -- before anyone noticed. Make sure the drop isn't traceable to you and just collect the take as long as it goes unnoticed.
You forgot some steps...
1. Place device
2. Collect the take 'as long as it goes unnoticed'
3. ???
4. Do not pass 'go'.
5. Do not collect $200.
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If the target office has a networked telephone system connected between the computer and the network, you might be able to monitor that at the same time. Many desks sit undisturbed for years, and even if someone sees the device they might not remove it.
Label it "LAN Surge Protector" or similar.
How often do you look under your desk? (Score:2)
Sure, it'd eventually be discovered but it'd likely be there a while.
Re:Sounds like a great industrial espionage device (Score:5, Insightful)
... because wall warts with a tail plugged into the nearest network port wouldn't attract any kind of attention.
Was that intended to be sarcastic?
How much time do YOU spend analyzing at the rat's nest of cabling located under your desk, where the Linksys wireless router and the three daisy-chained power strips live? Less than an hour per year, if you're anything like me.
I would dare say that an espionage device that disguised itself as a wall wart would be more likely to be discovered based on network analysis ("hold up, what's this device with the unfamiliar MAC off of network port 73?") than based on a visual inspection of the site.
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Forgive me if I'm wrong, but it doesn't sound like you are a network admin (disclaimer: IANANA). Do you know the "familiar" MACs on your network(s)? And what does it mean for a device to be on a network port 73? Unless you mean a physical port
Re:Sounds like a great industrial espionage device (Score:4, Funny)
the device would not likely be discovered visually, given it was placed well to begin with.
But if you're going to go to the trouble of carefully hiding an electronic device somewhere in an office, would you really choose this wall wart or something else? [thinkgeek.com]
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It really depends on Murphy's law. If you were planting the device, you would be caught red handed and receive fines and a jail term.
If the device was planted by someone you were interviewing in your office, it would escape detection for 5 years. Your company's trade secrets (in a convenient folder labeled "top_secret_company_docs") would be stolen by a larger competitor and used to drive your
A NAS? (Score:5, Interesting)
Sounds like a nice box to use as a NAS, just hook up a fast USB 2.0 drive and you're set. With a 1.2ghz CPU and all that RAM it should fly. Meh, my 2TB professional Raid 5 NAS only has a 400mhz CPU and IIRC 32mb of RAM.
just hook up a fast USB 2.0 drive and you're set (Score:4, Insightful)
I love how easy everything sounds when you precede it with "just".
You and I both know there is no such thing as a fast USB 2.0 drive, DESPITE THE SPECS.
Add USB + WIFI or Powerline and... (Score:2, Insightful)
...you could deploy these things as camera servers anywhere you had power. Locker rooms, hotel rooms, etc!... awesome!
Actually I do think these things have a place, though I am not sure exactly how I would use one, except maybe as described above.
Corporate Espionage (Score:2)
Oh yeah, that would probably be totally illegal...
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It'd be even more unobtrusive if it had some more power outlets on its back - y'know, to look like a pass-through device, like some nightlights. It certainly doesn't need a whole outlet's capacity for itself, and if you had another device or two plugged into IT, who'd ever look twice at the wart itself?
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Hard Drive Slot? (Score:2, Interesting)
Perhaps one more slot to insert an 2.5" hard drive would make that a perfect home server.
I don't need fast processor, but I need large hard disk space to share media files between my computers.
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It sucks 'til you realize you're sending files over Ethernet.
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Got plenty of ideas (Score:5, Interesting)
It looks pretty awesome.
Maybe I can use one with an USB cam to implement some cheap security cameras.
I can put a daemon on there to only start emailing images on movement. :)
Beowulf Cluster (Score:2)
Re:Beowulf Cluster (Score:5, Funny)
"Or at least a small chunk of Nantucket, RI"
That would be no small feat, seeing as Nantucket isn't in Rhode Island.
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Re:Beowulf Cluster (Score:5, Funny)
It will be. It. Will. Be.
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Not the most cost effective hpc system.
I just priced out a 1U rack mount system with 2xquad core 2.4GHz processors and 8GB of RAM which is equivalent in processing capabilities to about 16 of these guys for the same price (~$1600). Except it also has 320GB of disk space, PCIe slot, and dual gigabit network connection, and only needs one power cable.
I can even get a similar system in non-rack mount (just a tower server), for ~$1500 which includes a DVD drive.
Goatse would love this.. (Score:2, Funny)
Heresy (Score:4, Interesting)
It might be heresy, but I'm seriously considering using this instead of my Linux box at home... IF it can run rtorrent and hellanzb and handle the load of streaming to my Windows PC in the living room.
Software and CPU power are the only problems I foresee. (And CPU power is probably enough.)
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Storage might be a problem with only 512MB flash. Wonder if that's expandable.
And a site you can actually load... (Score:5, Informative)
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/02/100_linux_wallwart_launches.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890 [makezine.com]
http://dailydiy.com/2009/02/24/100-linux-wall-wart-launches/ [dailydiy.com]
Other coverage not yet /.ed (Score:2)
See also SlashGear's writeup [slashgear.com] or Legit Reviews [legitreviews.com] coverage at least until the /. effect allows Linux Devices some breathing room.
disruptive? (Score:3, Interesting)
Nice, but I don't think this is as big a deal as all that. More along the lines of price pressure than anything else. I may buy one, because it is so cheap. Even if I don't, I'm glad everyone else will have to lower their prices now. I've always felt they put on too big a price premium for the small size, considering the generally low performance of the class as a whole.
There are many similar devices already out there. There's the much beloved Linksys WRT54GL. I have a Soekris [soekris.com]. Not the most friendly plug and play device ever. I find it easier to update the CF drive by removing it and mounting it on a desktop system and editing files that way, rather than connecting via a serial port terminal. Gumstix [gumstix.com] is another. Lots of super micro mini ATX form bricks (mini-itx [mini-itx.com]) out there too. Expensive though.
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You're not missing anything. There aren't any, any more than there are on the Gumstix. Fortunately USB 2.0 can do 480 megabits per second and USB to Ethernet adapters are both cheap and very small.
Since the Beagleboard is open hardware, chances are fairly good that somebody will design a variant with 2 on-board gigabit ethernet ports, at some point. I thought the lack of ethernet was an unfortunate choice too.
MythTV seems like an obvious choice (Score:2)
Hope some creates really disruptive product to displace TiVO.
HEY! (Score:4, Funny)
Does anyone know what happened to the server? It just quit responding, and when I went to check it, all I found was a cell-phone charger.
Re:HEY! (Score:5, Funny)
They were running the webserver on it so........it popped out of the wall.
contain your enthusiasm (Score:3, Informative)
LinuxDevices constantly showcases new and fascinating Linux-based hardware like this. Everything from phones to tablets to embedded systems. The problem is that few of these ever seem to make it to market and the ones that do are usually only available to companies who can buy them by the thousands. The remainder that are within the reach of the average hobbyist don't stack up price-wise to more pedestrian solutions that can do the job for cheaper (e.g., a netbook, WRT54GL, or NSLU2).
versus NSLU2 (Score:4, Informative)
It's interesting to compare this to the Linksys NSLU2 [wikipedia.org], which I'm using as a home music server.
So I guess with the Marvell box you get somewhat higher specs, but I'm not sure you really need the higher specs. For most applications, you're going to attach a keychain usb drive to these things, and then the internal flash becomes irrelevant. 32 MB of memory may not sound like much these days, but it's actually plenty for a file server, music server, home automation system, etc. The main advantage I could see to the Marvell is that it sounds a little more open. Linksys ships the NSLU2 in a configuration where it's not really a general-purpose linux box, and you have to go through some hassles to get a real linux on it where you can install packages, etc. Linksys does, however, officially bless the use of third-party linix distros on the NSLU2.
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Well, I used to run my home server on an NSLU2 with 500GB of USB disk, before the power supply packed in. This was my main world-facing machine, and did routing, firewalling, HTTP serving for my website, NFS/SMB internally, SMTP and IMAP, backups, etc.
32MB is not quite enough for this. Picking the right software helps a lot --- spamassassin no, spamprobe yes; apache no, thttpd yes. The biggest load was processing spam; adding a greylister wot I wrote myself [sf.net] helped enormously, as most spam now got rejected b
I'll tell you why... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I'll tell you why... (Score:4, Funny)
I didn't understand a thing you said.
Copreehenshon is impotent too.
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Of course, that only works if you're literate to begin with.
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Re:I'll tell you why... (Score:5, Funny)
It's always heartening when someone can't sling an insult correctly due to their own ignorance...
It's You're a stupid nigger... (the apostrophe indicates dropped letters [wikipedia.org].
For what it's worth I usually see this type of comment from someone who's trying to suppress homosexual urges involving dark-brown penises....
Re:I'll tell you why... (Score:5, Funny)
Profanity is the last resort of desperately inarticulate motherfuckers.
Re:Wall-Mart? (Score:5, Funny)
Why do I keep reading that as Wall-Mart?
Because they got to you.
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That's funny; I see Wall-fnordWart.
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That's just weird.
It clearly reads "fnord-fnord-wall-fnord-mart-fnord."
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I've run into this with a number of shopping carts, including some big name sites. I usually have to switch to a different browser - a lot of carts don't work with Safari or Chrome, and some don't even work with FireFox.
Re:trouble with cart? (Score:5, Funny)
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The small cheap notebook segment transformed the low end of the market and also made the smaller systems less expensive than the mainstream rather than more expensive. The mainstream of the market it didn't touch at all, really. The "UMPC" market was outrageously expensive compared to most notebooks, but the Eee-alikes aren't much bigger and are much cheaper.
These little servers are smaller, cheaper, and sacrifice some power and storage at the very bottom end of the market. You can buy bigger systems just
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I believe that a significant part of the failure of Vista to gain widespread acceptance is due to the fact that it isn't offered on netbooks.
This wall wart won't kill servers any more than netbooks will kill Laptops, but they both offer a radically new approach in price and size. I think that's what tfsummary is trying to say.
Re:What's it good for? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Slashdot $100 law... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, because I participate. A whole lot of slashdot's readers are in the income bracket that has $100 as a toy price cut off. Over $100 and something may actually have to be sacrificed. At or under $100, the budget can absorb. Eight years ago I wanted to get away from my dependency on a single computer in the house. I got tired of being totally cut off and having to drag an old system out of the closet when my desktop suffered some sort of failure. So I bought three used PIIs. For $100 each. Two of the three have suffered hard drive failures in the intervening years, but aside from that, they've kept right on working. One of them is the NAT/firewall machine for the whole house.
Looks like I finally have a candidate for a replacement. With gigabit ethernet. And its CPU is 200 MHz faster. Gotta love progress.
Yesterday I bought two used APC 1000XL UPSs. For $100 each. The one I had already could hold up my desktop with a 21" CRT for 27 minutes. One of those 5 watt warts should be able to run on battery for, what, a month? GOTTA love progress.