NAS-Central Weblog

A while ago while searching for other NAS hacking communities I started to download and request GPL sources for various NAS devices (see gpl.nas-central.org). For those devices without available GPL sources and without any positive feedback from the the manufacturer (read my first post at the gpl-violations.org) lists I started to investigate if it is possible to disassemble the firmwares to proove a GPL violation.

With the help of gotnas I succeeded in creating a script for disassembling the firmware of the Hammer Myshare, a NAS also based on the Marvell Orion SoC. I uploaded the script to the nas-central.org downloadsection and posted instructions about how to disassemble the firmware and how to mount the initrd at the gpl-violations.org lists so it is easily possible to verify the GPL violations (read my second post at gpl-violations.org).

After a while when nothing happened I decided to notify the busybox developers (busybox.net) and linuxdevices.org about the posts and an article was featured instantly (NAS hackers allege GPL violation). A few days later the Software Freedom Law Center announced that it has filed two new copyright infringement lawsuits on behalf of the busybox developers Rob Landley and Erik Andersen against Bell Microproducts, Inc. & Super Micro Computer, Inc (SFLC Files Another Round of GPL Violation Lawsuits on Behalf of BusyBox Developers , linux-watch.com story).

Seems like it wasn`t wasted time

Marvell released Datasheets / Functional Erratas / User Manuals which describe the 88F5182 (”Feroceon SoC for Networking Storage”) and the 88F5181 (”Feroceon SoC for High Performance Networking”) ARM SoC`s (former known as Marvell Orion ARM SoC`s) in great detail. Another nice move from Marvell after managing to get support for this SoC`s into the mainline kernel.

Version 2.6.25 was released on the 16th April 2008. This means that the Marvell`s Feroceon micro-architecture and Orion-SoC`s are now officially supported by the mainline kernel.

• LKML release post
• Changelog for 2.6.25 at kernel.org
• Article at linuxdevices.com
• Changes with explanations for 2.6.25 at kernelnewbies.org

Get the kernel sources at kernel.org.

This does not mean that many NAS devices are now automatically supported, but it means that the hard work was already done for most of them. If you own a NAS based on the Orion SoC and you want to add support for it in the vanilla kernel then start by reading the Orion_NAS_customisation_guide. As long as your box does not have any special totally unsupported feature then it should be possible to add support with little effort.

linuxdevices.com features an article about the ongoing things regarding the Marvell Orion Linux kernel port. It gives some good information about who is involved.

Read more here.

smallnetbuilder.com definitely provides the best NAS reviews, especially because the reviewer (mostly the well known Jim Buzbee) always takes a glance at the mainboard and tries to get shell access. Always checkout the “Under the covers” page to gather some hardware information.

Take a look at the recent reviews at smallnetbuilder.com.

• Buffalo Linkstation EX aka LS-LGL
  
• Zyxel NSA-220
• QNAP TS-409
• Buffalo Linkstation Pro DUO
• Promise SmartStor
• HP MediaSmart Server EX470/EX475 (Windows based)
• QNAP TS-209 Pro
• Synology Disk Station DS107 series

After moving the buffalo forums to the new place it was time to make the wiki authentication independent from the buffalo forums.

Therefore a new forum at

• http://forums.nas-central.org/

was created. Notice that forumsections for HP, Iomega, Lacie, Netgear and Zyxel were created as these vendors do not have any user driven forums for their boxes. I added one for Linksys so EFG250/NAS200 owners have a place for discussion as well.

The main reasons for creating this forums are:

• Hardware mods (serial/jtag/…) can be investigated & discussed in the hardware sections
• In the kernel development section it can be discussed how to create support for SoC X/Board design Y in the vanilla kernel independent from the special hardware. Many boxes share the same SoC (Marvell orion, Storlink gemini)

Read the announcement here.

Following this poll it is clear that the majority wants the buffalo forum to be integrated with buffalo.nas-central.org and not moved away again from nas-central.org. The forum currently just is in the wrong place at forum.nas-central.org (same for the downloads), the forum is no general forum for nas-central.org (which possibly is needed later for linking subwiki authentication together). Thats why this is happening on the 25 February 2008.

Start: 1600 UTC

End: 2100 UTC

Notice that login in all the subwikis is affected as authentication of all subwikis (except the buffalo one) is linked to the forum database.

EDIT: Forum + downloadsection moved successfully.

Unfortunately it took longer than expected but everything now works again. See this thread for more info.

All owners of Marvell Orion based boxes by Synology should look at this thread. bzhou created an optware feed which is located here. Get involved and help testing!

Take a look at the Wiki Syntax Cheatsheet. This feature is very helpful for editors.

ddodgers confirmed in this post that the cs05q3armel-optware feed (which was initially setup for the Maxtor shared storage II and works on several boxes based on the same board by marvell) is also working on the Linkstation Pro Duo . Anyone with a Linkstation Pro DUO can follow this instructions to bootstrap.

EDIT: the optware packages were also reported to work on the Linkstation EZ!