Installing Debian Lenny on my DNS-323

I finished upgrading my Dlink DNS-323 to Debian Lenny today. I followed the instruction at:

http://www.cyrius.com/debian/orion/d-link/dns-323/install.html

The install took quite a while, I selected the standard package list. Then because it gets quit hot here in Griffith I really wanted to have fan control back, so instruction here were also followed.

As I wanted to install to an 8GB Flash drive I had handy I first uploaded the netboot.img firmware, turned off the DNS-323, removed the hard drives and left only the flash drive inserted, then powered up and followed the installation instructions.

I like keeping root on the flash drive as the hard drives can be stopped all day when not in use to save temp and power.

Fans are also controlled by lm-sensors and the unit seems to run about 47degC most of the day.

I use the unit mostly for irc (screen/weechat), rsync backup target and samba media server. It handles all that pretty well but I do notice it bog a fair bit with only 64mb ram and hard drive transfer rates are not as good as I am used to, but on the whole a great little unit (now that it runs debian).

This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , , . Bookmark the permalink. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.

2 Comments

  1. Glenn Vander Veer
    September 3, 2009 9:34 am

    Is that a true gigabit device? Or does it have gigabit capability, and is hampered by the processor? Did you get a speed increase after you installed Lenny?

    • September 3, 2009 10:08 am

      I think the 100mbps switch I have mine plugged into is more than adequate for this unit. I have two 750GB 7,200RPM drives installed and shared as separate drives and access via samba and ssh.
      Copying from the unit to my laptop gives:

      SSH: 500 KB/sec
      Samba: 5.4 MB/sec

      So with up and down’s it takes about 15mins to copy a 4.5Gb iso.
      SSH seems to be limited most by the little CPU in this thing although I have not tried to change the connection options to use lighter compression or encryption settings.