forum.excito.com

Hey there.
I need some help.
I bought an B3 and i wont to update it to the latest Firmware (2.6. i think so)
but i could not find a Download link and the wiki won't work also.

So could someone help me to power that thing up?

Thx for help.

(Hilfe in Deutsch auch wilkommen =P )

Hi,
hast du dir das Teil auch bei e**y gekauft ?
Meinst kam eben an und ich stehe vor dem selben Problem

Hast du irgend ein Image gefunden und wenn ja, hast du ein HowTow für die Installation?

Gruß
Tuscani

Hi guys, please stick to English in this forum, thanks.

The install image is available here:

http://install.mybubba.org/b3/image-2.4.1.1/

..you can update from 2.4.1.1 to 2.6.0.2 (latest) from the web interface, however, there seem to be some temporary issue with that update, I think they are working on that. You can however also update manually, this will work:

[code]
apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade
[/code]

hi johannes,

the B3 is now up and runnig with 2.6.0.2

THX

@ Tuscani

Ja hab es aus der Bucht für 32.50€ (sonst 37,95) ;P

@all

Thanks for the help.

Are there other things that i should know?

well, you might have already heard, but the original Excito company has filed bankruptcy and has been sold.

This means, that there probably will not be any official updates to the "Excito Software Suite" running on your B3.
However, since the B3 is based on a regular debian-distribution and you have access to the underlying OS (which with other NASes often you do not), you could always throw it (the Software-suite) away and use it (the B3) as a normal miniserver.
There is an active community, which

1. managed to update the underlying debian from squeeze to wheezy with the excito still running fine
2. ports other linux distribution to the device
3. is building newer kernels (there is a 3.2 kernel and a 3.16 one) with the necessary modifications to run on the B3

Would you mind pointing us to more information about the options to get our systems up to date?

First off:

If you're using the B3 as a NAS inside your home network, then there would not be any reason to upgrade the Linux version to a more recent one. The policy behind this is that if you try to fix what does not need fixing you're likely to break something.

That said:

If you intend to add new functions to the B3 you may find that Debian Squeeze - which is the core of the Bubba operating system - can't meet the dependencies that the new software requires. That will require you to upgrade the system, but it will also mean loosing the web based management interface of the B3 and some other functions that you might find useful. And if you're running the B3 as a server-router, with the B3 either tied directly to the internet or set as DMZ in your ISP supplied 'modem', then security considerations might also prompt you to desire a more recent Linux as well.

Options:

There are several threads on this forum that will give you those. People have succeeded in running Debian Wheezy, Arch Linux and Gentoo on the B3. You could probably run any other distro on the B3 as well though if you can tackle the main issue that prevents booting just any 3.x kernel. Search the forum for 'u-boot' if you like to know more. Current solutions are to flash the B3 hardware (Wheezy and Arch) or to enclose the kernel in a wrapper (Gentoo, but an Arch kernel has also been made available).

You should note here that Gentoo is a source based distro that you can tune to your own liking, but obviously needs compiling. On the B3 this can take several hours when installing large packages, unless you can find a bin-host that holds these packages with the same USE flags you require.

Thank you, Gordon, for a lucid answer which did clear things up a bit. I'm aware that there are several solutions floating around on the forum, but despite all the helpfulness of the forum members, these are somewhat confusing for this perennial Linux neophyte.