[debian-non-standard] Some questions about Debian on Asus WL-500g Premium

[Tomasz Chmielewski]

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