[PLUG] Pebble, Pyramid, Puppy, patheticness on my picomachine

[Larry Brigman]

On 9/1/06, Brendan Miller <brmiller at kudzuforest.com> wrote:
>
> With the recent discussions on Pebble and Pyramid Linux, I wondered how
> suitable these were for "generic" x86 hardware (as opposed to an
> outright embedded environment).  I have a Neoware thin client with 64MB
> IDE flash DOM, it's integrated Rtl8139 (or whatever) 10/100 NIC, and a
> PCI slot with a Ralink RT2500-based 802.11g card.  I would like to make
> this box into a wireless router/gateway device between my wired lan and
> a wireless network.
>
> I have done work on the Neoware boxen in the past, and their
> RedHat-derivative NeoLinux is pretty decent, albeit requiring a specific
> build environment.  I have an rt2500 driver built for this box that
> associates and works, but I have no iptables so it's kind of hard to do
> NAT/forwarding/et.al. without it.
>
> I could set up a build environment for the box and hack away, but I was
> kind of hoping to get this project running sooner than later.  Do either
> Pebble or Pyramid support the rt2500?  I've looked at Puppy too, but a
> lot of these small linux distros want to boot from a CD.  The Neobox has
> USB, so I could boot from a USB floppy (which I have), but I dont' have
> a USB CDROM.  It can PXE boot too--so I could set up some shenanigan
> using that.
>
> Basically, it comes down to the fact that I am lazy, er--I have two kids
> under two years old, and no time to work on this, and just need it to
> work.  Anyone have any Quick Routes to Routing Bliss that should work on
> this hardware?
>

If you have an existing Linux system then you could use the buildroot
project.  It will build
up a small system that has the packages you configure and does most of
the startup
and configuration of services.  It does have a limitation in that your
Linux box needs
an internet connection as it downloads the needed packages after you
run the config.
If you can work through a kernel build then you can work through the
buildroot.  You
will have to download and build your own kernel also.