4. Making it your Own

For the purposes of this review, I pretty much ignored the web interface and proceeded to configure the box manually. It turns out this was fairly simple because unlike the off-the-self NSLU2, the hard drive contains all of the boot-time configuration files and a telnet server is running by default. For example, setting up the box for my Domain Name Server was as easy as adding an entry to the /etc/resolv.conf file. If you're familiar with Linux, configuring this box is little different than what you'd do on your desktop system, but familiar enough that you should have no problem after you get the lay of the land.

To assist developers in the process of modifying the box, Buffalo provides a zip file on their web site containing pre-built packages such as perl, python, ssh, nfs, etc. These tools make the job of add adding new functionality easy. The complete native compilation tool-chain that Buffalo provides in particular eases installation of new functionality. This means that many open-source packages build locally with no modifications! For example, I was able to build and install an Apache web server with three steps:

If you're not inclined to build your own software, there are a few sources (besides Buffalo) of pre-built programs for this box. The Linux/PPC architecture is fairly well supported in the Linux community at large, so often times binaries built for other systems will run on the KB. For example, I downloaded a pre-built MySQL installation from mysql.com and it ran without problem. Some developers have reported using binaries built for Yellow Dog Linux and others are using binaries for a PPC version of Debian Linux. Some developers have gone as far as replacing the entire Buffalo installation with a PPC version of Debian Linux!

Kernel modifications are a bit more difficult than just adding applications. The kernel on this box is stored in flash, so creating a new kernel image requires burning flash. A procedure for replacing the kernel has been posted on the developers forums, but I've not yet tried it out.

Fortunately, adding drivers for new devices is a bit easier than replacing the entire kernel. Since the box was previously released in Japan, there are also a number of Japanese web sites devoted to Kuro Box development. A little digging found a site with additional pre-built device drivers for the kernel used in the box. By adding these drivers to my system, I was able to use a number of USB devices on the Kuro Box including a Web Cam, a USB to Ethernet adapter and a USB to Serial adapter. The single USB port could be an issue with some users, but I just plugged my devices into a USB hub and had all running simultaneously.