macsat.com OpenWrt and ASUS WL Forum

Hi

Is it possible to use a normal distro like Debian or Gentoo with the WL-HDD? In essence I would like to load the kernel from flash and have everything else running from the hdd. This would mean that I could use a distro (the layout of olegs firmware is somewhat confusing) I know and I wouldn't have to go through the flashfs-thing on every damn change. If nothing else, it should be possible to install a distro and chrooting into it (similar to booting from a cd and chrooting to save a partition).

So... Can anyone help?

Regards
Rumagent

Yes, it is possible.

No promises about performance though ;-)

Debian has been used with success. Check out this:
http://wpkg.org/index.php/Running_Debian_on_ASUS_WL-500G_deluxe
And this:
http://wiki.wl500g.info/index.php/Debian%20Distribution

Or this if you read German:
https://www.wirdorange.org/index.php/Wlhdd_debian

I really like the approach given in http://wpkg.org/index.php/Running_Debian_on_ASUS_WL-500G_deluxe , as it isn't based on chrooting. However, I seem to recall that the 4710 doesn't play very well with the 2.6 kernel. Is this still true?

As for speed. Shouldn't it be more or less identical if I create a minimal kernel and simply run the system of the hard drive?

Regards
Rumagent

What is definately true is that there is no really working wireless drivers for kernel 2.6 at the moment for the broadcom interfaces.

Drivers are around, but from what I hear they still dosnt work to well!

Ah well... I'll give it a shot with the 2.4 kernel then. If nothing else, it should make for a fun weekend. (god I am a sad person:) ).

Regards
Rumagent

Please do write about your experiences here, I'm sure there are other people that would like to go this way :-)

....we are a lot of sad people here ;-)