Yes, developer kit is what you want $99US

You can order them single..

I don't consider myself a Linux expert, I have enough knowledge to get by.  I have had no problems setting up my Sheevaplug to do pretty much exactly as you describe your requirement.   It uses twonkymedia to serve media from my USB HDD, it's got a webserver, and wTorrent (rTorrent with a web interface), and a few other tricks up it's sleeve.  Running mine with the alpha6 installer, updated to the latest jaunty with apt-get dist-upgrade, and get the latest pre-built kernel from http://sheeva.with-linux.com/sheeva/

If you have a little Linux knowledge, I say jump in, there are plenty of people on these forums, the general ubuntu support forums (although most scratch their head with ARM/embedded questions and don't quite get why you don't want full X-Windows with your apt-get...)

I know it sounds obvious, but that MiniUSb connector is well dodgy.  Make sure you ONLY use the only supplied, and that it's pusheed all the way in, it's very easy for it to come loose (too easy...)

If you are buying from Globalscale and getting it sent by Fedex to Europe.   YOU WILL be stung for additional EU import duties.  A nice letter will arrive 10 days or so after delivery...

My $99 plug has an addition cost of £15.91   (£9.11 VAT and £6.80 Fedex Admin fee).   

I was hoping the dev kits would be classed as engineering samples, and thus VAT-exempt, but clearly not...   Make sure you budget for this additional cost..   I think Globalscale should warn purchasers buying to EU that this will happen....

Saw similar things myself, the way the PCB is fitted and the hole for the miniUSB was not a great fit, and the plastic case was getting int the way of the miniusb connector, making a very crappy connection.   A stong wind in the wrong connection would result in the thing disconnecting (bit of an exageration there perhaps...)

Make sure that lead is pushed all the way in and making a nice connection...

Western Digital MyBook Mirror.   2TB (or 1TB of mirrored goodness).

Thanks installed it effortly (after commenting out the IPV6 entry due to OpenDNS problems).

My Fedex "Priority" shipment spend 3 days sat in Memphis and then another 3 sat in Stanstead UK.   Not very priority,  even worse when I had to wait 8 weeks just to get the thing shipped.

If this were any other product, I would have told them to shove it where the sun don't shine.   It's a testament to how good the product is, that people are prepared to wait for them (if begrudgingly)

The bit where it said you were ordering A DEVELOPMENT KIT should have warned you that it's a product for developers, not idiots.

If you know how to use ebay, I suggest you try and sell it on there.

A Reboot of my system connected via ssh, I can reconnect after about 20 seconds or so.

I use this backup script  (I run it monthly in my crontab)


Created a tar/bzip of the filesystem into a directory on my USB drive, it creates a directory of todays date to create the file into.  It also creates a text file containing details of what packages were installed when the snapshot was created.   NOTE the fact I also exclude my mounted USB HDD, as I don't want a backup of the USB HDD on the USB HDD :-)

Just save the script above as /etc/cron.monthly/backup.sh
 and give it execute permissions (chmod +x /etc/cron.monthly/backup.sh)

Another tip:

I used the Alpha6 installer which came with a root filesystem, you can see what packages you have installed by using this command:

(or if you want to send it to a text file:

I determined that I had x11-common installed, and I have no requirement for X11 on this box, so removed that, and all it's dependancies with the following command:


This dropped by flash usage from 45% to 35%   Nice...

Lighttpd (PHP5)
TwonkyMediaserver
SSHD
Screen (wtorrent/rTorrent session)

I agree it's not alot, but I was under the impression that Linux would use up any available memory, as unused memory is wasted memory.  However if a page page request comes in, it can't do anything with it..
 

Hi, I am getting regular occurances of the following in my DMESG:


Looking into this some more, it seems it occurs when my memory is exhausted.  I suspect this is because I am not running a swap file/partition.

I have created a 500MB swapfile on my USB HDD, and it seems to have stopped the errors, but having the page file on my HDD means it never spins down !

Is there another solution?   I have been thinking of creating the swap file on SD card. Is this a safe thing to do?  Will it prematurely damage the card?

Got it all working eventually, but that guide is seriously messed up in places with silly inaccuracies.   Still it gave me enough to work on...