New install confusion

Greetings

I have just ordered a Dockstar. I'm coming over from the Sheevaplug development kit world. I have a Sheevaplug running Debian squeeze that's used for rtorrent and NAS. So I know a little about this stuff but not a whole lot.

I'm slightly confused about what I do when I first start with the Dockstar. From what I've been reading here, I assume that when I get it, I'll need to

1) plug it into the router and then go through the "Activate Dockstar" process at dockstar.pogoplug.com.

2) ssh into the Dockstar with username:root and password:stxadmin and then do the hack at jeff.doozan.com/debian.

3) And then I'll never have to deal with the Pogoplug stuff anymore if I don't want to. The Dockstar is just a headless Debian server at that point.

Is that right?

Sorry for the n00b question, but I'm easily confused. :)

Thank you!

That will work, yes. In fact, if you're fast enough, you can even skip the Activation step. After you connect it to the network, find its IP address and connect with ssh. After you've connected, run

killall hbwd

and then continue with the Debian installer. If you can't ssh into it, you'll have to activate it and then re-enable SSH from the Pogoplug website.

-- Jeff

A-ha! Very good. Thank you for your reply :)

Could I lengthen the time I have to find its DHCP-assigned IP address by disconnecting my LAN/router from the internet?

It would be nice not to have to deal with the Pogoplug stuff at all.

In my very informal testing, if it's connected to the Internet, the Dockstar waits about 90 minutes before auto-updating and disabling the SSH. I think most people can connect to SSH and kill the update within that window.

If you want to be really safe, disconnecting your router from the Internet is your best bet. Just make sure you re-connect the Internet connection after running 'killall hbwd' so you can download the installer.


-- Jeff

I see. Shouldn't be a problem then :)

Thank you very much for your help.

Jeff Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ..................................
>
> If you want to be really safe, disconnecting your
> router from the Internet is your best bet. Just
> make sure you re-connect the Internet connection
> after running 'killall hbwd' so you can download
> the installer.
>
>
> -- Jeff

This was I did. In addition to run "killall hbwd" I also edited /etc/init.d/rcS to comment out the line "/etc/init.d/hbmgr.sh start " (you need to do mount -o remount,rw / first in order to be able to save the file) as suggested in http://forums.plugpbx.org/index.php?topic=97.15. This step is not needed if you immediately install Debian using Jeff's scripts, which will automatically do this.