Sheevaplug Dev Kit Graham Morrison Looks at a Complete Linux Machine Housed in What Appears to Be a PSU…
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Linux box Reviews SheevaPlug Dev Kit Graham Morrison looks at a complete Linux machine housed in what appears to be a PSU… he name ‘SheevaPlug’ In brief... presumably comes from the Tfact that this small white box is Complete Linux little bigger than the average PSU, and machine that’s no with the correct connector, it will attach larger than a box directly to a power socket. But instead used to hold a single teacup. of transforming voltages, this box Other options contains a complete Linux machine include the Lintop with 512MB flash storage, 512MB or the Bubba RAM and a 1.2GHz ARM CPU. Home Server. There’s standard USB port, a hosting USB port, an SD memory card slot and an RJ45 Ethernet connector, and the whole box comes with the latest ARM build of Ubuntu pre-installed. Connect the SheevaPlug to an Ethernet cable and you’re ready to go. It’s called a Development Kit because it was envisaged that equally well suited as a media player, by the small box’s performance, even if embedded developers could use these using the USB port to pump music to a it wouldn’t survive a Slashdotting. devices to build their products, after USB-compatible set of speakers, as the We also installed the generic ARM which black-box appliances could be hub for a home automation system or package of Logitech’s Squeezebox deployed based around the same even as a network time server with a music streaming server. We found it hardware. This is certainly true, but it suitable USB GPS unit. was pretty quick, outperforming both precludes many ordinary users from the Synology and the QNAP devices we Nice ’n’ simple looked at recently, making the “The best thing about To get the SheevaPlug up and running SheevaPlug an ideal hub for your music, you need to connect another Linux and MediaTomb performed just as well. this is that it uses the machine to the USB port, load the FTDI Its tiny form-factor, low power drain module and then use a terminal and low price make this an ideal ARM port of Ubuntu.” emulator to connect to the USB serial platform for experimentation. It also port. You can then log on to the makes a perfect replacement for the doing more ordinary things. Compared SheevaPlug and access the command now discontinued Linksys NSLU2, for with the average NAS box, for example, line. This is the JTAG and console example. There’s extensive online the SheevaPlug is more powerful and interface to the device. With the basic support for expanding storage and would make an ideal replacement if you model, you need to type a few booting off USB and flash devices, as just added external storage. The total commands to fix a permission problem, well as many other projects. There are package would still be cheaper than edit the DNS configuration and update no concessions for usability, but if you many NAS boxes. But the SheevaPlug is the distribution packages before you already have some idea of what you’d can start messing around, but this like to do with a SheevaPlug, you’re not doesn’t take more than 10 minutes. going to need any more convincing. LXF Features at a glance After which you have a blank canvas and you can connect over SSH. The best thing about this device is Verdict that it uses the new ARM port of Ubuntu. The result is that you can install SheevaPlug almost anything using apt-get install. A Developer: NewIT Ltd Web: http://newit.co.uk quick command-line count showed us Price: £89 25,292 possible packages, which is huge Features 8/10 compared with the typical NAS box. Performance 8/10 To put the machine to the test, we Ease of use 6/10 Debug Console Ubuntu grabbed several big applications, Value for money 9/10 No matter what state your You can install machine is in, you can thousands of packages including Apache, MySQL, PHP 5 and Cheap, stable, configurable and always use a terminal without having to finally WordPress, and installation was a powerful. Just like Linux. emulator to connect to worry about the CPU or breeze. We followed the standard the console. dependencies. Ubuntu guidelines to get things Rating 9/10 working, and we were very impressed www.tuxradar.com January 2010 LXF127 27 LXF127.rev_sheevaplug 27 23/11/09 1:06:17 pm.