DreamPlug: A Dream Becomes True

One year ago I heared of something called “plug computers”. These small devices have become popular in the Linux world, because they are in fact quite powerful. You can use them for all networking tasks you can image. It can be configured as a router, mail server, web server, file server, backup system and the like. I was really interested and so I considered buying a SheevaPlug or GuruPlug. But when I actually decided to buy one, I didn’t get one because they were out of stock.

Time passed and I forgot these gadgets for a while. Later something with the name “DreamPlug” crossed my way on the Internet. I couldn’t resist. I wanted to get one. Immediately! I’m living in Germany and so purchasing from Globalscale directly is no big fun. The FedEx shipping costs nearly the same amount of money as the plug computer itself. And as far as I know this doesn’t include taxes for import or export. That’s why I purchased my DreamPlug from the British shop NewIT for about 170£ (incl. shipping) via credit card. I can highly recommend the shop, everything went smooth, the quality is perfect, contact was nice and friendly.

The first thing I did was to install a clean version of Debian, because I wanted to have full control and an unmodified Debian system. After recognizing that Debian Stable lacks a few things I needed, I upgraded and the plug is now running Debian Testing. Currently my DreamPlug acts as wireless router for sharing the UMTS Internet connection. Some server processes are running too — the list is growing. I’m a bit sad, because there are some proprietary parts necessary to make complete use of all the offered features of the plug. A list of problems if you are not willing to using the preinstalled system:

• It’s not possible to replace the u-boot bootloader, because the SPI flash is not supported.
• The shipped bootloader has many features disabled. It can only read fat16 filesystems, no support for ext2 or other good filesystems.
• Debian’s Linux kernel won’t boot, because it’s searching for a NAND flash or some MMC stuff and this seems to lock up the box. I compiled my own Linux kernel (v3.0-rc7 + patches from different mailing lists) with only the minimal drivers and settings enabled and it works like a charm.
• The free Linux drivers for wireless lan and bluetooth are not able to upload the firmware correctly and that’s why client mode does not work for me.
• Wireless master mode (acting as access point) only works with proprietary modules and a different firmware.

To fix the last two problems, I’m simply using a Ralink usb wireless stick. Hopefully all these problems get addressed in the future.

Apart from these quite show-stopping issues, which are affecting nearly all brand-new devices, the DreamPlug is really really impressive.