Martin Steigerwald schrieb: > Hello! > > I read your article about Debian on Asus WL-500g Deluxe and I found it > quite interesting[1]. I would like to run pure Debian as my ADSL router > to have that well known very good package management, be able to upgrade > and stuff. And I expect that routers will only get more flash and more > memory in the future... FYI, I'm running Asus WL-500g Deluxe with Sagem f at st 800 ADSL modem (it uses ueagle_atm kernel module) - it doesn't need any external power and is connected to Asus using USB only. Too bad it doesn't support ADSL2 and ADSL2+, so it can't be used just everywhere. (...) > From what I read the Asus WL-500g Premium would be a good choice, but I am > wondering a bit about the memory footprint of Debian on it. On the VIA > machine with iptables, pppoe, openntpd, of course SSH and more getty's > than I would need on the Asus (or even on the VIA;) it requires about > 10-12 MB which seems quite comfortable for me. It uses the same for MIPS - 10-12 MB for basic setup (SSH, iptables, web server, etc.). ntpd doesn't make much sense, as these devices don't have hardware clock - it may be better idea to sync the clock via crontab. (...) > 1) What do you run on your Asus with Debian? Oh, I used o run different weird stuff on it. I should describe it somewhere on the page, I guess. I used to run a Philips USB camera, with vlc doing live transcoding, and Apache for a web page to view it. Memory usage was about 40 MB or more then, so it was swapping a bit. Did work just fine, though. I used to run Mailman + Apache + Postfix - memory usage was 50 MB or more, and a oom-killer was killing Mailman processes. Tuning swappiness in /proc would prevent killing Mailman processes I guess, but I'm not sure running Mailman on these tiny routers is such a great idea (was a bit slow). Right now I'm running a memory-intensive task (as for these routers, that is), and memory usage is: # free total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 29896 28912 984 0 360 7668 -/+ buffers/cache: 20884 9012 Swap: 189432 23344 166088 Works fine. > 2) Did you enable the additional 16 MB? Is it difficult to do? Seems to > require a few commands only, but they have to be entered at some boot > prompt I am not sure how to reach. Via serial? What additional 16 MB? The device has 32 MB, and kernel sees full 32 MB. > Do I have to use some > soldering to use the serial console or is a cable for that available? You need a 3.3V USB-serial cable, and you don't need to solder anything (on my WL-500gP there are little holes in which I stick needles, which are connected to the USB-serial cable). > I > would like to avoid hardware hacks as I am not that skilled in that. I > feel comfortable with opening the box, but I do not like to do some > soldering if it can be avoided, although that 128 MB memory hacks sounds > interesting ;-). Hmm, what 128 MB memory hacks? > 3) How is the memory footprint on your Asus router? Does what you run all > fit into 32 MB or do you use swap regularily? I do not like it to use > swap on usual operation. If it uses a bit of swap during bzr add and bzr > commit I think that would be okay. As I said, SSH + Apache is about 12 MB. It doesn't harm if something gets swapped now and then, I guess. > 4) Is it possible to disable WLAN so that it doesn't send anymore? Curently, WLAN doesn't work at all (unless you replace the broadcom card with something else), so no problem with that. I have an old USB wireless device (using out of tree prism2_usb module - see http://linux-wlan.org/). > 5) Did you measurement how much power it uses? Does it get quite hot? No idea how much power it uses. Much less than a PC. It doesn't get hot. > 5) What are your other experiences with that router? > > 6) Just curious: Did you try software raid 1 with two USB sticks? ;-) No, it doesn't have enough USB ports. But in theory, should work. For your interest: I have an old USB stick, to which I swap quite a lot for a couple of years - works fine. I had two or three USB sticks, including brand names, which got damaged after just a week or month of usage, without any swap usage. I had a short-circuit - USB-stick was read-only after that, and I had to reflash the router, because it didn't boot anymore. I hope it gives you some overview ;) -- Tomasz Chmielewski http://wpkg.org |