wview (free) runs fine on the original sheevaplug - see the Google group for wview for details.

Understand your point, but it's really irrelevant.

The vendor should be delivering an operating system containing iptables and the matching kernel modules to permit the user to set up a firewall if they so choose.  The decision to set up a firewall (or not) is of course the user's, but the software as delivered by the vendor should make "yes" a possibility without requiring software updates.

I also disagree with your position that your approach is sufficient, but that's a whole other discussion I'd prefer to not get into.  It's clear your mind is made up that no firewall is needed.

I might add that the rc7 updated kernels look great.  Now if iptables was just in the vanilla distro so no apt-get was needed :-)

That's a really good howto.  Thanks for posting the link.

Why didn't you just toss $30 at the problem and put a 16 SD card in there and run off that ?

In order of your questions...
No. No yes yes yes. no. Little/why-does-it-matter ?

Start reading the forums here and the wiki.  It'll take a while for your sheeva to arrive (mine took 38 days) so spend the time surfing the forums here and the other sheeva sites/wikis out there.  It'll help.

The system comes with a small Ubuntu 9 on it, mine was a pre-release, which you can use apt-get to update to current.  The apt setup is good, there are a zillion pre-built packages already available for download.  My recollection is the sheeva is little endian if it matters, but the apt-get method gets the right stuff regardless for me.

The flash is 'not' read only, you can (and should) update it but be aware it's jffs2 so it's slow, and the size is of course very limited.  I updated the kernel to 2.6.30-rc7 from the instructions in the kernel forums here, verified it was good, then copied the rootfs over to a ext3-formatted 16GB SD card.  The speed increase is 'amazing' if you do that.

Now that I had 15+ GB free space, I used apt-get to install gcc and all the other things I needed to compile the wview weather station software I bought the sheeva to host.  Other than wview itself, which has no debian installer (yet) I have not had to compile anything on the sheeva.  Works great so far.

The memory graph looks strange.  Are you just graphing the "free" command ?
Can you post your data collection script ?

I have a Patriot 16GB SD card from Feb'08 which works great.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220254&Tpk=PSF16GSDHC6

(I bought it at Newegg for $75 back then.  Only $28.99 now.  Amazing.)

Couple things.....

When you get an opportunity to rebuild, could you add the NAT modules too ?  I see iptables support is in there (great!!!) but the nat stuff is defined as disabled.  Might as well have a full suite of tools in the toolbox if possible.

Secondly, would it be possible to indicate a version of 2.6.30-rc7 in the filenames or readme filename etc ?  You've been through quite a number of revs of the same kernel version, but it's not self-evident from the kernel strings nor filename which rev is on the server (it's always the latest of course, but is that the first or the 12th variant of the same kernel rev you've built?).

Recompiling and making the kernels available for us all is much appreciated.  Thanks !

I updated the kernel to 2.6.30-rc7 from the links here which 'has' the pl2303 driver that my usb2serial needed, so my guess is yes.   I didn't look at the vanilla kernel in any detail before upgrading to get current (for other reasons)

I'm finding the forums almost unreadable due to the
use of grey on dark brown background.

Is there a way to switch the color palette so that I can
have dark print on light background ala a newspaper
or some other user-selectable color map or look+feel ?

Couldn't find anything on the forums themselves.

The wview weather station software compiles and runs just fine on the Sheeva.  Nothing special needed, just build up your Ubuntu (I put my rootfs on SD card) to have the prerequisites there to compile and run it.

Didn't you post in the kernel forum that you had installed
the updated orion kernel, but had 'not' changed the uboot
environment variables per the readme file.  See my previous
response there for the steps you missed....

You might want to re-read the README file again......

#
# Sheeva kernel install
# This README can be used to flash the new kernel
# Watch out for erase/flash errors
# If errors are encountered you should redo the flash
#
# This is a mainline Linux Kernel and you must set
# the mainlineLinux and arcNumber env variables in U-Boot
# and change the bootargs for a successful boot.
#
# setenv mainlineLinux yes
# setenv arcNumber 2097
####### change bootargs, replace nand_mtd with orion_nand and add rootfstype=jffs2
# setenv bootargs rootfstype=jffs2 console=ttyS0,115200 mtdparts=orion_nand:0x400000@0x100000(uImage),0x1fb00000@0x500000(rootfs) rw root=/dev/mtdblock1 rw ip=192.168.1.9:192.168.1.4:192.168.1.4:255.255.255.0:DB88FXX81:eth0:none
# saveenv

Read the other links for getting the serial console to work under Windows with Teraterm.  If you follow the instructions then Teraterm will see the console at 115200,8n1 using the supplied usb cable.

Looks good on mine.  Thanks much for doing the hard stuff of recompiling for us all.

Since this was my first reflash on the Sheeva I thought I'd mention that the kernel update process  (a) scared the heck out of me and (b) worked fabulously well.   I hadn't found a quick newbie's guide for updating the kernel but FWIW, what I did was:

• serial console into the box
• ran wget to download the README file script
• ran the downloaded script with bash -xv to watch it
• typed "reboot" of course
• interrupted the boot and:

• added the two variables mentioned in the readme
• edited the bootargs as mentioned in the readme
• did saveenv

Also, the system didn't boot the first couple times afterwards, hanging just after reading the kernel.  I pulled the power and had a dead console in teraterm and no ping response over the network.

I needed to pull the power a couple times before it would progress normally.  Also opened the box up and hit the reset button (which didn't help). The system seemed to clear its brain when I disconnected both the ethernet and serial cables and pulled the power.   I then reconnected the serial console, got back into teraterm, and it proceeded normally.  Not certain exactly what broke things loose but it works fine now.

Thanks again.

Because the Internet is a dangerous place.

At a minimum the default kernel should have iptables built in and the os should have the iptables command-line utilities present so folks can lock their box down right away.

Yes I know we "can" get/compile/configure out own kernels to add it in, but my opinion is any commercial product should have this there as a minimum.