Hi I ran across some info on installing Debian onto a PogoPlug device the other day and wrote up a quick guide for it that I thought I would share.
This is a cheap, capable little device for tossing up and making do your bidding, and it doesn't need to run some stripped install.
Some portions of it are less technical than others...
Ok we are going to go over installing the full version of Debian Squeeze onto your PogoPlug Pink device. (This is the first edition device. These directions are not for any newer Pogo devices.)
Here is an example of one that is a first generation device that will work with these directions:
Pogo Drive for $33 Shipped
http://www.adorama.com/COCPOGOE02.ht...urce=cj_361116
You can get one of these devices for 33 bucks online, and this method of installing Debian goes onto a USB flash drive that you place into the Pogo. All of the changes (Except where you tell your Pogo to boot from a USB drive) are done onto the flash drive, so if you want to return your Pogo Plug's stock capabilities, just remove the flas drive and boot your Pogo.
When we are done, you will have a fully functioning Debian server for $33 plus the cost of a USB flash drive. If you want more storage capacity, slap on a USB portable hard drive. Also, this little box is fanless and silent and draws around 4 watts of electricity.
So the first thing you must do is to boot your Pogo, determine its IP address and login to it via SSH. You will use the following credentials: root with the password ceadmin
Once in, you will need to perform the following:
Gathered from this page:
http://jeff.doozan.com/debian/uboot/
cd /tmp
wget http://jeff.doozan.com/debian/uboot/install_uboot_mtd0.sh
chmod +x install_uboot_mtd0.sh
./install_uboot_mtd0.sh
Now you have changed the default Pogo boot behavior to attempt to boot a USB drive first before booting itself.
Next, you will want to fdisk and format your USB flash drive to get it ready to use with your Pogo.
I prefer to use a Ubuntu desktop for this with the gparted application, however you can do it directly from your Pogo with these directions:
fdisk /dev/sda
# Configure partion 1 as Linux (I'd recommend making this at least 512Mb. The default bare-bones installation uses 280Mb.) --The more the better here because this is where Debian will live and you will be able to install more apps with more space.
# Configure partion 2 as Linux Swap (I used 256MB. Adjust according to your anticipated memory usage.)
# Set partition 1 active
Ok now your drive is ready for linux, so plug it into your Pogo if you partitioned it with some other computer.
Here is the install script we will use to install Debian. Enter the following commands:
cd /tmp
wget http://jeff.doozan.com/debian/dockstar.debian-lenny.sh
chmod +x dockstar.debian-lenny.sh
./dockstar.debian-lenny.sh
It will confirm that you know what you are doing and that your flash drive will be erased. This process will take about 30 minutes depending on your internet speed.
Once complete, it will ask you to reboot, so do it.
It will boot off of your flash drive, and you will be able to use ssh to login to your new Debian installation.
The default username and password are:
root
root
You should change the password first thing.
Next, we will want to update the OS. Run the following:
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
Once that is finished, we will want to upgrade the distribution to Squeeze, which is the latest Debian distro. We could have gone straight to that, but the scripts for Pogo to make that happen are broken, so we have to do the dist upgrade from the working Lenny version of Debian. No big deal.
To do this, we need to update our sources. I prefer to use the text editor Nano over vi, so first I install nano.
apt-get install nano
Update your sources file by entering this command:
nano /etc/apt/sources.list
entering the following information, replacing the same items that reference Lenny.
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian squeeze main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian squeeze main contrib non-free
My sources.list file looks like this after the updates:
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian squeeze main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian squeeze main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main
deb http://volatile.debian.org/debian-volatile squeeze/volatile main
deb-src http://volatile.debian.org/debian-volatile squeeze/volatile main
# Orion repository
deb http://people.debian.org/~tbm/orion squeeze main
Ok. Now run apt-get update again
Install the archive keyring prior to performing the OS upgrade to avoid upgrade errors:
apt-get install debian-archive-keyring
Now we are ready to upgrade the OS to Debian Squeeze with this command:
apt-get dist-upgrade
Sit back and drink a beer or just go to the bar, as this operation will take at least an hour.
During the process, the upgrade will stop a few times to ask you questions. Just say yes to everything.
Ok now that you have your Debian server, what the heck are you going to do with it?
-If you aren't awesome at the Linux commandline, I'd suggest installing Webmin. This is a web based interface that you can use to manage your server and most applications you install to it.
-Next, you can install a game server if you are so inclined. I installed tremulous-server to mine just to see if it would do it. No problemo. Tremulous is a fun, free first person shooter.
-Another thing you can do is install a LAMP web server. This is Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. I installed this and it works really nicely. You can run your own web server at home to do development on or host your own web page from your broadband connection. -Keep in mind that the Pogo has only 256 megs of RAM. YOu will want to do some mySQL optimization for smaller memory systems after installation. There are guides for this online.
-One other thing you could do is to install Samba in order to do file sharing across your network. Samba is the Linux version of a Windows server file share.
-Finally, you could use your Pogo as a cheap offsite backup solution. Get a USB portable hard drive and add it to your Pogo and then install duplicity. This program allows you to make a set it and forget it syncing of data from your location securely to some other location. This only syncs changes, so once your data is at your remote location, you will just be syncing changes. The best part is that the data is encrypted at the remote location, so your buddy never knows or can access your data.
So here is the scenario: You have a Pogo at your house that has samba shares on it, so your household computers all backup to it.
You get another Pogo, get it all configured and make a duplicity copy of your data to it. Now you send it to your buddy that has broadband internet. He configured his router so that you can access your pogo remotely via SSH. You then create or edit your automated duplicity task to do a weekly sync with the remote Pogo.
Done deal. Set it and forget it remote backups on the cheap. If you want to get fancy, you can have the Pogo on your end email you with the job status log once it completes.
Here are my instructions for installing Webmin since it is not part of the apt repositories:
Run the following commands to install webmin:
wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/webadmin/webmin_1.530_all.deb
Install Webmin's prerequisites. You can copy and paste this whole lines of stuff into your SSH comand to do them all at once.
apt-get install perl libnet-ssleay-perl openssl libauthen-pam-perl libpam-runtime libio-pty-perl apt-show-versions language-pack-en-base nano
Now install the webmin package
dpkg --install webmin_1.530_all.deb
Once installed, you will access it from: https://pogoplug IP address:10000
This is a cheap, capable little device for tossing up and making do your bidding, and it doesn't need to run some stripped install.
Some portions of it are less technical than others...
Ok we are going to go over installing the full version of Debian Squeeze onto your PogoPlug Pink device. (This is the first edition device. These directions are not for any newer Pogo devices.)
Here is an example of one that is a first generation device that will work with these directions:
Pogo Drive for $33 Shipped
http://www.adorama.com/COCPOGOE02.ht...urce=cj_361116
You can get one of these devices for 33 bucks online, and this method of installing Debian goes onto a USB flash drive that you place into the Pogo. All of the changes (Except where you tell your Pogo to boot from a USB drive) are done onto the flash drive, so if you want to return your Pogo Plug's stock capabilities, just remove the flas drive and boot your Pogo.
When we are done, you will have a fully functioning Debian server for $33 plus the cost of a USB flash drive. If you want more storage capacity, slap on a USB portable hard drive. Also, this little box is fanless and silent and draws around 4 watts of electricity.
So the first thing you must do is to boot your Pogo, determine its IP address and login to it via SSH. You will use the following credentials: root with the password ceadmin
Once in, you will need to perform the following:
Gathered from this page:
http://jeff.doozan.com/debian/uboot/
cd /tmp
wget http://jeff.doozan.com/debian/uboot/install_uboot_mtd0.sh
chmod +x install_uboot_mtd0.sh
./install_uboot_mtd0.sh
Now you have changed the default Pogo boot behavior to attempt to boot a USB drive first before booting itself.
Next, you will want to fdisk and format your USB flash drive to get it ready to use with your Pogo.
I prefer to use a Ubuntu desktop for this with the gparted application, however you can do it directly from your Pogo with these directions:
fdisk /dev/sda
# Configure partion 1 as Linux (I'd recommend making this at least 512Mb. The default bare-bones installation uses 280Mb.) --The more the better here because this is where Debian will live and you will be able to install more apps with more space.
# Configure partion 2 as Linux Swap (I used 256MB. Adjust according to your anticipated memory usage.)
# Set partition 1 active
Ok now your drive is ready for linux, so plug it into your Pogo if you partitioned it with some other computer.
Here is the install script we will use to install Debian. Enter the following commands:
cd /tmp
wget http://jeff.doozan.com/debian/dockstar.debian-lenny.sh
chmod +x dockstar.debian-lenny.sh
./dockstar.debian-lenny.sh
It will confirm that you know what you are doing and that your flash drive will be erased. This process will take about 30 minutes depending on your internet speed.
Once complete, it will ask you to reboot, so do it.
It will boot off of your flash drive, and you will be able to use ssh to login to your new Debian installation.
The default username and password are:
root
root
You should change the password first thing.
Next, we will want to update the OS. Run the following:
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
Once that is finished, we will want to upgrade the distribution to Squeeze, which is the latest Debian distro. We could have gone straight to that, but the scripts for Pogo to make that happen are broken, so we have to do the dist upgrade from the working Lenny version of Debian. No big deal.
To do this, we need to update our sources. I prefer to use the text editor Nano over vi, so first I install nano.
apt-get install nano
Update your sources file by entering this command:
nano /etc/apt/sources.list
entering the following information, replacing the same items that reference Lenny.
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian squeeze main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian squeeze main contrib non-free
My sources.list file looks like this after the updates:
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian squeeze main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian squeeze main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main
deb http://volatile.debian.org/debian-volatile squeeze/volatile main
deb-src http://volatile.debian.org/debian-volatile squeeze/volatile main
# Orion repository
deb http://people.debian.org/~tbm/orion squeeze main
Ok. Now run apt-get update again
Install the archive keyring prior to performing the OS upgrade to avoid upgrade errors:
apt-get install debian-archive-keyring
Now we are ready to upgrade the OS to Debian Squeeze with this command:
apt-get dist-upgrade
Sit back and drink a beer or just go to the bar, as this operation will take at least an hour.
During the process, the upgrade will stop a few times to ask you questions. Just say yes to everything.
Ok now that you have your Debian server, what the heck are you going to do with it?
-If you aren't awesome at the Linux commandline, I'd suggest installing Webmin. This is a web based interface that you can use to manage your server and most applications you install to it.
-Next, you can install a game server if you are so inclined. I installed tremulous-server to mine just to see if it would do it. No problemo. Tremulous is a fun, free first person shooter.
-Another thing you can do is install a LAMP web server. This is Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. I installed this and it works really nicely. You can run your own web server at home to do development on or host your own web page from your broadband connection. -Keep in mind that the Pogo has only 256 megs of RAM. YOu will want to do some mySQL optimization for smaller memory systems after installation. There are guides for this online.
-One other thing you could do is to install Samba in order to do file sharing across your network. Samba is the Linux version of a Windows server file share.
-Finally, you could use your Pogo as a cheap offsite backup solution. Get a USB portable hard drive and add it to your Pogo and then install duplicity. This program allows you to make a set it and forget it syncing of data from your location securely to some other location. This only syncs changes, so once your data is at your remote location, you will just be syncing changes. The best part is that the data is encrypted at the remote location, so your buddy never knows or can access your data.
So here is the scenario: You have a Pogo at your house that has samba shares on it, so your household computers all backup to it.
You get another Pogo, get it all configured and make a duplicity copy of your data to it. Now you send it to your buddy that has broadband internet. He configured his router so that you can access your pogo remotely via SSH. You then create or edit your automated duplicity task to do a weekly sync with the remote Pogo.
Done deal. Set it and forget it remote backups on the cheap. If you want to get fancy, you can have the Pogo on your end email you with the job status log once it completes.
Here are my instructions for installing Webmin since it is not part of the apt repositories:
Run the following commands to install webmin:
wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/webadmin/webmin_1.530_all.deb
Install Webmin's prerequisites. You can copy and paste this whole lines of stuff into your SSH comand to do them all at once.
apt-get install perl libnet-ssleay-perl openssl libauthen-pam-perl libpam-runtime libio-pty-perl apt-show-versions language-pack-en-base nano
Now install the webmin package
dpkg --install webmin_1.530_all.deb
Once installed, you will access it from: https://pogoplug IP address:10000
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