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

Tomasz Chmielewski mangoo at wpkg.org
Wed Feb 13 12:01:57 CET 2008


Martin Steigerwald schrieb:

(...)

>>> 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.
> 
> But it has a system clock I supposed? So a ntpdate on boot and openntpd 
> afterwards should work to keep the clock stable? AFAIK openntpd doesn't 
> fiddle with the hardware clock at all

Yes, you will have a normal system clock.


>> (...)
>>
>>> 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.
> 
> And thats just a ADSL router ;-). Well then bzr should work and if it 
> swaps a bit on bzr usage, but not during usual operation it should be a 
> problem.

Should be a problem, or should not be a problem?


>>> 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.
> 
> I read that the device indeed has 32 MB, but 16 MB are disabled somehow:
> - http://gersbo.dk/2006/09/wl-500gp-enable-full-32-mb-of-ram.html
> - http://wl500g.info/showthread.php?t=5270

I didn't have to do anything to enable 32 MB.
Perhaps it was valid with some older kernels?


(...)

>>> 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.
> 
> Why is that? The device - well at least the Asus WL-500g Premium - is 
> reported to be supported by FreeWrt and OpenWrt at least so I thought 
> WLAN would work? But I think the Premium uses a slightly different WLAN 
> chip ;-)

OpenWRT uses 2.4 kernel for Broadcom boards, which supports wireless on 
these Asus routers.
In order to boot from USB stick, you have to use 2.6 kernel, which 
doesn't support these wireless cards yet.
2.6.24 should support these wireless cards, but this kernel was not yet 
ported for Broadcom boards in OpenWRT.


(...)

>> 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.
> 
> Hmmm... any criteria to detect good versus not so good USB sticks? A 
> backup would be in order. I have an quite old 512 MB one from Transcend 
> which still works, but I did not use it that often. I would like to have 
> a bit more storage for the Asus tough, I think 2GB ;).

If it works for a month, it should be working fine.
I think I had two USB-sticks from Transcend, and one was non-functional 
as I first connected it (so, the factory made a broken device); the 
second died after a month of usage or so.


>> I hope it gives you some overview ;)
> 
> Thanks a lot. Looks good. I think I will order one of those instead of 
> waiting for 64 MB variants ;-) (which I could order once they are fully 
> supported then;-).

Have you seen FSG-3?

http://wpkg.org/Running_Debian_on_Freecom_FSG-3

You could replace the HDD with a flash disk if you need something quiet.


-- 
Tomasz Chmielewski



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