On 2/22/07, Joel CARNAT <joel@carnat.net> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm looking at external IDE disk serving as NAS.
> Many of them advertise using Linux and seem to be able to upgrade the PROM.
>
> My question is, what is the generic procedure to replace the embedded Linux with a home-made NetBSD kernel/userland ? Is this difficult ? I mean is there a need of finding a hole in the software update process or is it as simple as "replacing the firware image" with a bootable iso file ?

There are a few which NetBSD has been booted on with varying degrees
of success and useability.

The Linksys NSLU2 boots NetBSD (arm based), but as far as I know you
have to add a serial console in it, interrupt it's normal booting
process and force it to netboot the NetBSD kernel. Not very
convenient.

I/O data makes a few machines that can boot NetBSD, a few are sh based
and one is arm based. I think these are fairly complete. The reason I
have stayed away is because I think the OS runs on the built in disk,
which I'm not a fan of.

There was a rather neat article in 2600 magazine on how to hack the
Linux kernel in one of those BYOD NAS enclosures, which I sure
probably exists in a million places on the net as well. Not NetBSD
specific though.

Andy