forum.excito.com

Hi!

I'm curious as to whether it is possible to install an alternate OS or not on the Bubba Two due to it's architecture and there not being an monitor interface. I made some searches and found a topic about USB-serial adapters, but it didn't seem to be what I was looking for.

I was thinking about a minimalist Debian install, or perhaps *BSD.

Best regards!

Yep, some people have installed plain old Debian on their B2. It should be possible to install any OS that supports PowerPC architecture but functionality will vary of course. Personally, I don't see the point but each to his own.

I'm mostly interested because I intend to use the NAS as a energy efficient server for education purposes, i.e. sysadmin summer courses. I'm pretty much only interested in the OS, Apache, MySQL et cetera.

Bubba 2 OS is a minimalistic Debian install anyway .. it already has Apache and you can add a MySQL server if you wish, in fact you can add whatever you want really.

If you just want an minimalistic install is probably easier to remove the packages that you do not need from the Bubba.

It should be possible to install an alternate OS especially if the OS has support for install using an chroot enviroment like gentoo http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/altinstall.xml#doc_chap5.

One thing to keep in mind is that an normal kernel will not have support for all hardware in the bubba. Excito has done some patches to the kernel which you might need to add to the kernel the alternate OS installs. That means you have to patch and compile the kernel your self. One other problem is that the kernel is not installed in the same place "/boot" as with normal computers but rather in a flash. If you installs an none booting kernel into the flash you have problems. The only thing to do the is to solder an chip on the bubba board to get an serial interface to be able to talk to the bubba.

ryz wrote:One other problem is that the kernel is not installed in the same place "/boot" as with normal computers but rather in a flash. If you installs an none booting kernel into the flash you have problems. The only thing to do the is to solder an chip on the bubba board to get an serial interface to be able to talk to the bubba.

I wasn't aware of that.

RandomUsername wrote:

ryz wrote:One other problem is that the kernel is not installed in the same place "/boot" as with normal computers but rather in a flash. If you installs an none booting kernel into the flash you have problems. The only thing to do the is to solder an chip on the bubba board to get an serial interface to be able to talk to the bubba.

I wasn't aware of that.

In Bubba|Two the kernel is located in /boot; only the bootloader is located in flash.

Hi

Do anyone know if there are any instructions / suggestions if you want to install some other OS?