I have a Sheevaplug with eSATA and the external HDD Case TB32CS with Silicon Image Chip (I think it's the SiI 5744CNU).
I have Debian squeeze running which does not support (e)SATA yet but it will in the very near future.
The external case can be connected via eSATA OR USB. My question is: Can I format the HDD in the external case to ext4 and connect it to the Sheevaplug via USB and store my data on it - and once Debian supports eSATA switch the cable from USB to eSATA and mount it the way it was before without loosing any data, file/directory rights etc.?
I would wait until Debian with (e)SATA support is released but I really lack diskspace and there would be 3000GB unused for an uncertain period of time.

I guess this will work but we are talking about 3000GB of data I might loose - so it would be nice to be confirmed.

I don't get it to work.
I've downloaded the pre-build plist from PlugPBX and replaced the old file. It doesn't work.
I've checked the System-Profiler and the Vendor/Product ID is in hex code (product: 0x9e8f vendor: 0x9e88). Inside the plist they are decimal (product: 40591 vendor: 40584).
So what are the values for my sheeva? Both don't work.

Ok, I was going to post this as a question or "HELP ME". But I fixed it. Since I already wrote down all the problems I had I will post them anyway for all the other poor guys in my situation as a reference.


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I was going to install Debian on my SD Card using the tutorial from tbm (cyrius.com).
I checked which u-boot version I had and since it was too old I had to upgrade it. I used the "USB stick method" from the same site using WinXP.
Somehow this went terribly wrong. I guess the USB Stick was faulty (although it was recognized). So the Sheevaplug won't boot up and I had no access via the serial port (the screen stayed black after pressing Enter several times). The green LED was on, the blue LED was off.

So I read this tutorial to "unbrick" it: http://plugcomputer.org/plugwiki/index.php/SheevaPlug_Installer
I'm not using minicom so the "bug" section does not apply for me.
It seems my plug is older than July so I had no problems recognizing it, I also skipped the section.
I used a brand new USB Stick from Transcend to make sure this time nothing goes wrong because of the USB Stick. I have copied all the files to the root as told in the tutorial and put it in the Sheevaplug. I started it and on XP I ran: runme.exe nand from the command prompt.
After some command action the important lines should be:
successfully erased blocks 5 to 6 and NAND flash[...]
wrote file uboot-dev.bin to NAND flash 0 up to offset 0x000c0000 in 20s.
...
...
...
successfully erased blocks 0 to 4 and NAND flash[...]
wrote file uboot.bin to NAND flash 0 up to offset 0x00074000 in 75s.
The green LED is on and so is the blue LED.
So far so good.
At the beginning of this procedure it is said to unplug and replug the minisusb cable after uboot.bin is written. The same is stated in the tutorial "Afterwards the Windows version beeps; you need to unplug your mini usb cable, plug it back again and open the terminal[...]"

My first problem is, there is no beep. So I thought "it is said... 'after uboot.bin is written...' " which obviously is the case - I unplugged the miniusb. There was the standard windows sound which occures after inserting or removing USB devices (is this meant by beep?). But then the command line of Windows was flooded by communication error messages. I used CTRL+C to exit it and tried to connect with Putty. Still the same black screen I had directly after the brick.
I started all over starting with "runme.exe nand" but this time I waited 10 minutes after "wrote file uboot.bin" and still no beep. So I unplugged the mini usb cable again and it's the same error message flood. This time I did not exit the command line but tried to connect with putty. It worked but there was the same message flood with unreadable characters. Looked like a wrong encoding, so nothing readable.
I started all over again... and this time I waited more than 30 minutes. There were 2 addition lines after 30 minutes: "Error: invalid mode value encountered 0" and "Error: cpsr contains invalid mode value - communication failed". After 5 more minutes it continued with "[...]cpsr: 0xffffffff pc: 0xffffffe9"
MMU[...]
and again both of the errors.
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After the last lines (I guess the sheeva was on for 45 minutes) I cancelled the command line again (with CTRL+C) and unplugged/replugged the miniusb. This time putty worked (after pressing the Enter key once - didn't work before!). Everything is back to normal - and with the latest uboot I intended to install (and because the Sheevaplug bricked).

The Sheeva has the jTag already onboard. You can access it with the cable included.

In a German forum 2 guys also received their Guruplug today.

So this thread is obsolete?
I just do a apt-get update, apt-get dist-upgrade and install the new kernel and the e-SATA drive will work out of the box?

SSH in as root and "poweroff" it.

I haven't read all of your posts but as far as I can see you have the problems I have thought of before.
I'm going to install Debian (Squeeze) on the Sheevaplug and it only supports installing it on SD (as far as I know).

So my concerns are about the limited read/write cycles of the SD card.
Is the OS booted into the RAM so while the Sheevaplug has power there won't be any (unnecessary) writing/reading cycles?
Does the (access)speed of the SD Card have influence on the overall system speed (like copying files over the network, unpacking rar files on the HDD plugged to the Sheevaplug)?
What about the apt-get update files beeing installed? Are they stored in RAM first before written to disk? I would like to install debian squeeze, but since it is under (heavy) development the files will change several times a week and would crash the SD in no time.
What is the size of Debian with some packages like openssl, libcurl, nscurses, rtorrent, libtorrent, proftpd? Is a 2GB SD card enough or should I head for at least 4GB?
Is there any advantage in the SDHC besides "High(er) Capacity" concerning the Sheevaplug?

As far as I know it was only shown to the public as "next device". The Guruplug is shipping for some days (literally) which is the Plugcomputer 2.0.

Does anyone have a valid "Coupon or Discount Number" for a Sheevaplug ordner on newit?

Unfortunately I still don't get it.
I'm on a NSLU2 right now and I will upgrade to a Sheevaplug or Guruplug.

To install Debian on the NSLU2 I had to go into the upgrade mode by pressing and holding down a little hardware button. Then I was able to flash a custom debian firmware (installer) over the network and install it to an external disk. So whenever my hard disk would blow up and so does the operating system I could redo all the steps from upgrade mode to flashing over the network and the NSLU2 would be up and running again.

So I'm thinking about the debian installation to a Sheevaplug which is only possible to a SD card (according to www.cyrius.com). After you did some pre stuff you come to this step: and quoted from this thread:
and:

So what I understand is that you need the additional JTAG for the Guruplug to go into this "serial console" (because there is no miniusb port) mode for installing debian (I know it is already preinstalled but in case you want to reinstall it for some reason) AND if you somehow blow up your operating system (maybe your SD card just dies because of too many read/write cycles) you need the JTAG again for redo all the necessary steps.

In the specification PDF of the Guruplug there's a column "Hardware Security Engines - AES, DES and 3DES encryption algorithms, SHA1 and MD5 authentication algorithms". This section is not included in the Sheevaplug specification PDF.
Does the Sheevaplug have AES hardware encryption or not? I'm confused because I read something about dm-crypt on the Sheevaplug, or is it just a software solution?

Have you tried to use a crossover cable to connect to the sheeva without any other components in between?

I had a similar problem with a remote server. It was a problem with the passive mode and the port forwarding. Note that you need 2 ports for FTP. Standard port for the commands is 21 and the transfer port is 20.

Does anybody know a retailer shipping to Europe (especially Germany) who still has the "free JTAG module" on preorder offer?
I missed it on newit 

Valid objections.

Actually I won't use it for backup purpose but for DVD-sized files (primary HD mkv files between 1-8GB). So these benchmarks represent my purpose.

I guess the other objections need more reading and information input on my side.

You're right. Right now I have a NSLU2 from Cisco/Linksys and I'm going to upgrade. But I would like to see a tremendous speed increase to justify the capital investment.