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Ultra and Debian base

bajorgensen
Aspirant

Ultra and Debian base

Hi.

New owner of a Ultra 6 as of 1 month ago. Overall very pleased with the unit, especially as it was on a 40% off sale.
Initially a bit bummed out that I didn't get the Pro due to faster CPU and the possibility for more memory, (didn't do my research)
but now I am pretty contect after stuffing it with 4 GB and discovering that the dual Atom is indeed fast enough for Plex transcoding to my AppleTV.
Also replaced the 12 cm fan with a silent one, but the PSU one is rattling a bit and it seems like a harder replacement.

However I am a bit of a tinker and discovering that the unit basically is a standard PC with a custom Debian Etch I started planning to install my own OS.
Thinking a bit and looking a bit deeper into the sources I have come to the conclusion that it really should not be necessary for power user like me.
KUDOS to the developers for keeping up reasonably well on kernel updates and backporting fixes.
Also a good choice to base off Debian, maybe the most stable Linux distro out there.

What I really do not understand is why you do not leverage Debian more fully?
For instance using the apt-get infrastructure should be a no-brainer for distribution of firmware and updates.
You obviously have the infrastructure to do this already, as I was getting minor updates from Netgear already.
It would be really convinient to do a apt-get upgrade or apt-get install WhatEverIWant,
and for the standard user it must be plenty of aptitude web front ends that easily integrates to the web GUI.
I've installed several programs, but the stuff I really want is not in Etch, and I am afraid of breaking something.
(why do you need a costum glib anyway?)

As you already is using a custom kernel (from wheezy?) why dont you use the newer 3.2 kernel from sid instead?
It seems like all the non Netgear patches already is included in the new kernel. Should be easier to maintain for your developers?
Message 1 of 4
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: Ultra and Debian base

NetGear does maintain a certain amount of stuff in a custom apt-get repository referenced in /etc/apt/sources.list if you like. If you are going to install stuff yourself you should backup your data very regularly (you should backup your data regularly anyway) as if you break stuff NetGear may refuse to help fix the problem.

An apt-get upgrade would break stuff. There are a number of custom scripts used by the ReadyNAS and the web-admin interface is reliant on some old stuff. There are some conflicts which prevent a distribution upgrade at this time. Hopefully these will be sorted out. NetGear does a thorough QA test of each firmware update before release.

It would be nice to see a major update that updates to a newer Debian distribution etc. However with the customisations NetGear has made it tends to be easier to backport stuff rather than rewrite a huge amount of code.

The new ARM (Duo/NV+ v2) devices are on Debian Squeeze and have a new web-admin interface. I hope they port this web interface to the x86 devices (last I've heard is still no ETA) and update the Debian distribution (possibly at the same time) but we'll have to wait and see what they do.

Welcome to the forum!
Message 2 of 4
bajorgensen
Aspirant

Re: Ultra and Debian base

Hi!

Thank you, I've already been lurking to figure out some stuff.

I realize stuff might break, that is why this request for a "cleaner" repository.
I appriciate Netgears QA and as a "black box" the unit is more than satisfactory.

Having high hopes for a new distro, there must be some benefit for Netgear for a common codebase as well?
From what I've gathered it really cant be that much code? Very few of the open source patches are Netgear specific,
and with the exception of the web interface and the custom boot stuff there cant be much more?

When I get some time I might experiment a bit with the unit, as long as I stay away from the flash, recovery should be a breeze.
Thinking of that, the flash is 128 MB? Why don't you utilize that and throw in some more apps?
Message 3 of 4
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: Ultra and Debian base

Yes updating it would have some benefits.

Not sure how much code would have to be rewritten as a lot of it would be proprietary. They could possible port some old stuff for the newer distro. Will have to wait and see what they do. If it was easy it would have been done long ago.

Yes so long as you stay away from the flash, BIOS etc. you should hopefully be fine. Worst case should be needing to do a factory default to wipe the disks and start afresh. I don't think the flash can be mounted easily when the NAS is booted anyway.

NetGear doesn't want to fill the flash and needs to leave room for future growth. Also need to keep compatibility with older units (I guess they probably have 128MB flash too but I'm not sure). Having apps available as add-ons under Add-ons > Available downloaded and installed on demand is a good way to do it.
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