How to set up alarm on Freecom Silverstore?

[dotgrey]

Hi,

I just got hold of a Freecom Silverstore - its a two drive NAS, documentation is available here

In the documentation it says that runs busybox 1.17.2 and uses u-boot as bootloader. The support provided me with the root pw (pm me if you need) so I have full access via ssh.

My question is how to install archlinuxarm on this device. A few ideas crossed my mind:

(1) use the firmware upload tool that is provided by Freecom - it seems to push a *.img file to the device

(2) write alarm to HDD instead of flash and make the firmware (busybox) launch it - could be possible with u-boot but as the HDD is in RAID 4 configuration I was not able to get info if u-boot is RAID capable

(3) as the device has 2 USB ports it might be possible to boot arch from USB and install it to the local flash storage?

I have been using Linux for quite some time now, but embedded systems other than the raspberryPI are still a mystery to me - is there anybody who can help me set this up?

Here is some information I was able to gather (I hope its usefull):

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '/')proc/cpuinfo

Processor : Feroceon 88FR131 rev 1 (v5l)
BogoMIPS : 992.87
Features : swp half thumb fastmult edsp
CPU implementer : 0x56
CPU architecture: 5TE
CPU variant : 0x2
CPU part : 0x131
CPU revision : 1

Hardware : Feroceon-KW
Revision : 0000
Serial : 0000000000000000

/proc/mtd
dev: size erasesize name
mtd0: 000a0000 00020000 "uboot"
mtd1: 00040000 00020000 "param"
mtd2: 00280000 00020000 "preroot"
mtd3: 00380000 00020000 "uimage"
mtd4: 076e0000 00020000 "rootfs"
mtd5: 00220000 00020000 "misc"
mtd6: 08000000 00020000 "flash"

/proc/interrupts
CPU0
1: 1065182 - kw_tick
9: 0 - xhci_hcd:usb2
11: 25092 - mv_ethernet
19: 0 - ehci_hcd:usb1
21: 6333 - mvSata
22: 0 - cesa
29: 54408 - mv64xxx_i2c
33: 373 - serial
44: 0 - error_pex0
93: 0 - RESET
113: 0 - POWER
Err: 0

/proc/meminfo
MemTotal: 117672 kB
MemFree: 3460 kB
Buffers: 4160 kB
Cached: 33528 kB
SwapCached: 868 kB
Active: 50112 kB
Inactive: 45020 kB
Active(anon): 28296 kB
Inactive(anon): 29292 kB
Active(file): 21816 kB
Inactive(file): 15728 kB
Unevictable: 0 kB
Mlocked: 0 kB
SwapTotal: 2097136 kB
SwapFree: 2090660 kB
Dirty: 8 kB
Writeback: 0 kB
AnonPages: 56768 kB
Mapped: 22748 kB
Slab: 12264 kB
SReclaimable: 1476 kB
SUnreclaim: 10788 kB
PageTables: 1404 kB
NFS_Unstable: 0 kB
Bounce: 0 kB
WritebackTmp: 0 kB
CommitLimit: 2155972 kB
Committed_AS: 259472 kB
VmallocTotal: 516096 kB
VmallocUsed: 1420 kB
VmallocChunk: 514256 kB

free
total used free shared buffers
Mem: 117672 114212 3460 0 4168
Swap: 2097136 6476 2090660
Total: 2214808 120688 2094120

[WarheadsSE]

Can you get a serial console to access uboot and have a look around in it's command and environment?

It is definitely a kirkwood though, as stated it is a Kirkwood 6283 variant [ http://www.freecom.com/Products/Externa ... tore2#Tech ]

[dotgrey]

I can't access a RS232 interface, is there another way to do so? Btw I mailed to Freecom support requesting the sourcecode.

[Jabbah]

I've only just started looking into the possibility of getting elevated access to the system and perhaps eventually turning it into an Arch or (Em)debian box.
Since I have not been able to discover any accessible UART on the device, I can't get access to the system without the root pw (see my pm).

[plxscp]

@dotgrey have you finally found a solution for your problem?
I also want to install a fresh linux on my silverstore and probably seafile or owncloud... What are your experiences?
Have you achieved any success on your project?

Cheers!