DockStar

Dockstar?

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

• 1.2 GHz ARM processor
• 3 USB 2.0 ports
• 1 USB 2.0 port with a little mini connector allowing the user to just plug in a Seagate FreeAgent Go hard drive
• 1 Gigabit Ethernet NIC
• $20 price tag
• 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
• Serial console is hard to get to (but the bootloader and Linux can use the normal Linux network console setup)

Debianizing a DockStar

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)