DockStar

What's a Dockstar?

Seagate's Free Agent DockStar is a very cheap, nifty little Linux machine with the following features:

• 1.2 GHz ARM processor
• 4 powered USB 2.0 ports broken out like so:
  • 1 port with a USB mini A connector centered in the drive cradle section of the case allowing the user to just plug in a Seagate FreeAgent Go hard drive
  • 3 ports with type A connectors (as you'd find on a mouse, keyboard, or USB flash drive)
• 1 Gigabit Ethernet NIC
• $20 price tag
• HiFN 795x crypto accelerator
• User replacable firmware (it comes with PogoPlug from the factory -- the device is intended as a NAS)

It does have a few small annoyances:

• Only 128 Mbytes of RAM (256 or 512 would be SO much nicer)
• No battery backed clock (but that's what NTP is for, anyway)
• Serial console is (somewhat) hard to get to (but the bootloader and Linux can use the normal Linux network console setup)

DockStar OS options

There are a number of options for replacing the PogoPlug OS on a DockStar: OpenWRT supports them. Plugbox Linux does, too. But I'm a Debian fan, so that's what I'm running on mine.

Jeff Doozan has done much of the legwork making Debian an easy option on a Dockstar. He has a procedure for installing a new bootloader, kernel, and root filesystem into the Dockstar's flash and bootstrapping a Debian installation onto a USB mass storage device attached to the Dockstar (thumb drive, jump drive, FreeAgent Go, portable USB hard drive or whatever) without breaking open the case and fiddling with a serial console.

Before Installing Debian

Here's the procedure I used to used when putting mine together:

1. buy a Dockstar (actually used some Amazon credits to buy three of them for $20 each a few months ago)
2. get some USB flash drives (found some 4Gbyte Sandisk Cruzers for $8 each at a local office supply store. Wonder why the 8Gbyte USB drives cost 4 times more instead of 2 times more)
3. unbox Dockstar, note Ethernet MAC address from sticker on bottom of the case
4. pick an IP address to give it (internal home network is 172.16.0.0/24 and I don't want the Pogoplug firmware phoning home before I've replaced it with Debian)
5. set it up with a static IP address on the home network (quick edit to /etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf)
6. prevent IP from the dockstar from reaching the internet (sudo iptables -I FORWARD -s 172.16.0.200 -j REJECT on the router)
7. attach Dockstar to Ethernet switch, power it on, wait until it is pingable
8. Make sure we can log in to it: ssh root@172.16.0.200 (password should be stxadmin)
9. Make a backup of the factory firmware (instructions can be found at How to brick your Dockstar and void the warranty

Installing Debian

Jeff Doozan has done me a great service here.