I give up -solved- whew tnx :-)

You know some of the sites on the net, where they say "how to install _____ on a PogoPlug"? That's why I bought one, because i thought it could run cool and 24/7 with light duty hard drive accessing. Again, a poor man's Zyxel, upgradable one set of pocket change at a time.

A while back, the instructions worked, and people had it working in a few hours, and started using it. But now, and i admit I'm NO Linux genius, but the Powers That Be, whether Pogoplug's hardware maker or Debian in general, make it too difficult for me to attempt this anymore. Even if i were to get this running perfect, my head is so spinning thus far I wouldn't know what to do if anything went wrong.

Qui's site, applying to Arch Linux, works. One line at a time, down the ToDo list, and it's done. Nothing else does for Debian anymore. i hate the idea of that cute little 1.2 Ghz 256 RAM PogoPlug gathering dust, but if it only ran XP I'd have had it working with plenty of RAM to spare and with a firewall I understood.

Here, I've "met" some people dedicated to advising others, but not helping. Day after day I've tried your advice, and when it wasn't over my head either partition table is whacked or something else, commands don't command like wget. Maybe a 30 watt machine running Windows isn't such a carbon blasphemy after all. You know how much carbon I've consumed in trying to get this green machine going? A lot of food, sleep, downloading, running a 100-watt machine to keep on the lookout for the line of code that would do what was offered by your site in the first place.

I hope you're not mad at me for saying it, but again, i didn't make the claims you made.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/10/2015 02:06PM by JoeyPogoPlugE02.

Hey Joey,

Remember about how long did it take for you to be well verse in Windows (I mean the admin stuff)? It will take time to get use to embedded Linux. Even experienced desktop Linux users have to struggle a bit at the beginning (look at posts at various forums). If your goal is to install the system asap and then deal with applications only, then yes, choose a distro that enable you to do that. But if you really want to learn embedded Linux devices then I'd say stick around! search the forum, ask questions, and brick a Pogo or two, buy serial module converter to unbrick it :)

-bodhi
===========================
Forum Wiki
bodhi's corner (buy bodhi a beer)

Question..... If the only goal is to have a pogoplug running Linux. Don't you already have that with the arch disk?

If the goal is embedded Linux using Debian. Then this is The best site to learn, however, the learning curve from windows to embedded Linux can be MASSIVE. I speak as a relatively savvy Linux user on GUI based distros


STICK WITH IT JOE. THE PAIN IS WORTH THE GAIN.

Yer right - bodhi that relates a story. Back in about '98 I was a student at a University, and found myself in a computer lab with a crashed computer and a day's work lost. They showed me how to save to floppy. I asked questions. Then got a home computer, and asked more questions. Eventually they put-up a sign saying essentially "don't ask about yer home computer" LOL I knew that was directed at me and went to the lab director. Said to him "how about a deal, whatever you teach me I'll help others?" He walked over to the sign and took it down LOL

And Gravelrash, you're right, it's not like i have that much pride to swallow, pink Pogoplug and all. I may as well find some sparkles and unicorn stickers and NOSE BACK TO THE GRINDSTONE MWAHAAAA!!

Good for you Joe!

and in my point of view - others may differ and thats there perogative - THE ONLY DAFT QUESTION IS THE ONE YOU DONT ASK.

Its by asking questions, we gain answers. With answers we gain knowledge, with knowledge we gain confidence.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/06/2015 11:06AM by Gravelrash.

Yeah really, why DO i want to "upgrade" to Debian? Or, what would it take for me to delay Debian-on-Pogoplug?). Or, if I COULD run XP on this, why is that, what would I do? Here's a simple list:

1. Torrents. There's so many legitimate torrents that make the world a better place. -edit-out warez joke-

2. The ability to have the Pogoplug recognize USB drives and mount them.

3. a Temporary familiar GUI, just for once a week administration. There's something about a GUI.

4. Package manager, especially to compare utilities like GUI disk formatting and all that.

5. (now I'm thinking Windows-easy) the ability to spin up and down one hard drive and turn on and off USB stick(s). you know, wake and sleep ability for anything possible, both to spare RAM but allow occasional one trick ponying. Also to dedicate a slot to replaceable swap stick.

I haven't tried more than 5-6 flavors of Linux, but after an exhaustive year testing every Ubuntu app I could get my hands on, I like the stock apps in Mint - pretty much the same ones. With 256 MB RAM I wouldn't expect this to be anything but a one great trick-at-a-time pony. But that totally suffices. There' a lot of ways to skin a cat, and one of these tiny Windows CE units might be perfect to administer Pogoplug and then turn off. Yes, i'd like to experiment with OwnCloud and Wordpress and simple web server for the neighborhood. But that's all the thoughts in my head right now. Most are possible on a Zyxel, but I'm sure the extra RAM and speedy hard drives help a lot.

And if OwnCloud allowed you to dedicate an external drive to cloud sharing, that'd be icing on a very nice and efficient cake. i say that because last i checked, you needed some deep dark cyber vault to protect your OwnCloud storage, when in reality you'd be happy using a USB stick to house diabetes cookbooks for your neighbor to access.

So the main reason i thought Debian was the answer, is to use their package repository system to accomplish the 5-point list above and tinker with OwnCloud before pressing Pogo into hopefully a long life of service to all :-) So I'm definitely open to brainstorming.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/07/2015 01:19AM by JoeyPogoPlugE02.

It's getting late, but before bed the thought occurred to share additional ideas. Lets say we scratch what i already said. Here's two other scenarios:

1. A PogoPlug on my terms. The original idea for Pogoplug isn't bad. Be able to access your data (99+% over LAN), and occasionally access/copy with a smart phone or other device. No need to remotely print. But I don't like the idea of all my data being indexed and monitored by foreign countries. Nothing I have is THAT sensitive, and sad to say, I don't even have any porn! But if I could jailbreak the stock Pogoplug software that might even suffice with no linux at all!

2. Home cloud storage - same thing really, just the LAN part. Again, if i could have all my stuff on a 1-2 TB hard drive, with mirror backup hard drive, accessible from any computer here: a desktop daytime, a laptop dinner time, ThinClient before bed, super cool. Life changing. But again the Pogo needs to power down hard drives, one most of the time and the other, some of the time.

Well off to bed. Brainstorm away, gents:-)

I'm GOING CRAZY! I almost quit again but the Arch copied to a hard drive and that works. Webmin works. This is enough progress to take a little break. I'm losing it. Sorry. Freaking works though. Because this hard drive is practically disposable, I might go nuts and download every Arch package (well, a few things) there is.


-update- I see some desktop environments, will spend some quality time reading up on Arch. I'm starting to "get" the whys and wherefores of the Arch way, which is coding efficiency over newb-ease. I promise not to bloat it out. And apologize for being a flake - today was rough and it ended on a good note. Whew. g 'night.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/08/2015 12:38AM by JoeyPogoPlugE02.