Just in case anyone here is interested in taking such a distribution for a spin, RedSleeve Linux is now on public alpha release. It is deemed an alpha purely because the packages aren't signed yet - other than that, I have been using it for the past few months on my Toshiba AC100 (Tegra2) and various Kirkwood based devices (Sheeva/Guru/Dream Plugs). It should also work on D2Plug and any other ARMv5 or later CPU.

Blurb about what/why/who is here:
http://www.redsleeve.org/about/

Info on where to get the rootfs and packages and sign up to the mailing list is here:
http://www.redsleeve.org/2012/02/12/alpha/

Please take the rootfs for a spin and report success/problems/suggestions/fixes on the users mailing list here:
http://lists.redsleeve.org/mailman/listinfo/users

Thanks for responding, I appreciate it.

Regarding the RAM soldering, I wouldn't be doing it myself, I would be sending it to a specialist shop to do the work with proper industrial soldering equipment. In the past they upgraded the RAM in my HTC Universal from 64MB to 128MB without any problems, and I expect this would be similar.

I would like to make u-boot on the Sheeva Plug behave like it does on the Efika Genesi MX Smartbook, i.e. scan boot devices (SD, USB, MTD, in that order) for a a first partition on the device, and then if it is a partition it understnds (fat, ext2, in that order), looks for boot.scr in the root directory, and boots from the instructions there.

How can this be configured into the u-boot? What does the environment need to be set to? If somebody could provide a link to documentation on this, I'd appreciate it.

I have a few questions:

1) Are there any built in sensors (e.g. temperature) that are accessible via lm_sensors or similar on the Sheeva Plug? Some probes cause a lock-up crash, others find nothing. Are there any sensors?

2) Is there a way to adjust the clock-seed at run-time on the Sheeva? I notice that most ARM based Android phones work with an application called SetCPU that allows the CPU to be underclocked to improve battery life and overclocked to improve performance. Are there controls available on the Sheeva to do this? Can it work with the cpuspeed package/daemon to improve idle power savings? I norice the kernel enables the cpuidle ladder and menu governors. How does this compare to the x86 equivalents such as EIST on the Atom? When under-clocking to save power, is there a way to drop the CPU voltage at the same time to save even more power like with EIST? Since ARM is all about power efficiency, I'm hoping such features exist.

3) I can see in the Kirkwood spec that it supports up to 2GB of RAM. Does anyone know what chips could be used to upgrade a Sheeva to 2GB? I'll take my chances with my soldering skills, but I need to know what chips would work.

I have one of the standard white ones (no eSATA, single ethernet) and it doesn't seem to have any overheating issues. It's plugged into a Gb ethernet switch and the port doesn't get hot. The white plastic casing gets warm, but I doubt it's more than about 20C above ambient.

A couple of things:
1) You may want to look into ramzswap (google compcache). Recent kernels have it built in. You can create a virtual compressed swap disk in RAM. It works wonders when you're short on RAM and swapping isn't an option.
2) I haven't checked this myself yet (haven't taken my sheeva apart yet) but I heard that the board actually has space for 4 RAM chips, but only 2 are populated. So with a tiny soldering iron, a bit of patience, and a couple of extra memory chips, you should be able to DIY upgrade it to 1GB. I'm going to investigate this myself, and if it looks plausible, I'll probably do it.