4Hak3rs

Today I decided to check the status of the two NSLU2s I have and do a little testing.
The first one is flashed with unslung. I also ran the process ‘unsling’ which copies the OS to an external device, I am using either a USB key or a hard disk. The advantage of using the USB key is that you can use any USB hard disk even one that is formatted fat32 because the OS is on the USB key and not the hard disk, unfortunately,that is could lead to problems because the USB key has a limited number of ‘writes’ so it can wear out and you will wake up one day to find that your NSLU2 does not work any more. Using the hard disk instead of a USB key has the advantage that it does not wear out like a USB key, that you have the other USB port available, but this drive needs to be formatted ext3, so you can’t just plug it into your Windows box and copy files.

An interested note is that you can run the NSLU2 without any USB devices that have gone through the ‘unsling’ process, meaning that the OS is run from the internal memory of the NSLU2. You can still access any USB storage device you connect, but you cannot install any packages to the NSLU2 to add functionality. You need to ‘unsling’ to add optware package which add more features like upnp av, itunes, ccxstream etc…

The second NSLU2 I have, I just flashed with SlugOS, which does allow you to install packages to the internal memory.