Piratebox on Pogoplug

There wasn't already a topic for this so I thought I'd start one.

I opened it up because I plan to battery power it, rather than use the built in PSU. There is a button on the circuit board. I don't know what it does. Any ideas?

The first thing the pogoplug does when you plug it in is update itself, and turn off the SSH daemon. I had to sign up to their site, then use the settings menu to reenable ssh, which forced a root password change to one you set when you check the box. The default root password thing doesn't work any more.

At the moment I have used the latest version of the walkthrough to create the USB stick. The box sits there going herpaderp for a while then the status light goes solid orange, hopefully telling me that it has booted but I don't know what the status light represents any more. The box however is not pulling an IP from the dd-wrt's dhcp server. I'm assuming it hasn't booted properly but since I can't connect to it I don't know what it is up to.

Someone mentioned that they had to use an older version of piratebox to get the pogoplug to boot but I've run out of time to look at it tonight. I'll play with it after work tomorrow.

Tried the drive in all USB ports in case it mattered. It seems to boot in all but one. Without the drive it boots into the old pogoplug system ok and pulls an IP from my router so at least I know that works fine, and that DHCP is working over the ethernet port.

I checked the resolv.conf and that is pointing to the correct IP.

I tried to read the logs. Most of them are just full of ^@^@^@ and the dmesg log shows it detecting most of the hardware but the ethernet port never goes up and tries to pull an IP.

I will try using the old script later to see what I can do with it, but right now I am at work so will have to try this when I get back home as I don't have a crossover lead with me to forward the net from my phone's wifi to the pogoplug.

I used the old guide and it worked perfectly. The light on the front goes solid orange much faster than before also, so it seems something is sitting there for ages, then timing out when using the current version. I will need to construct a serial console cable for the pogoplug to get an idea as to what the hell is crashing it.

I did deviate from the script by setting a static IP on the pogoplug of 192.168.1.10 as it made much more sense than just looking at what DHCP was issuing it and forwarding everything there, just in case for some reason dd-wrt's dhcp server doesn't give it the same IP every time. It is also much easier to remember the IP if I want to connect straight to it with a crossover cable for testing something later.

I noticed that while I was installing that the pogoplug got it's date and time from somewhere. It could be that the pogoplug has an internal cmos clock where the dockstar does not. I installed ntp on it just in case it doesn't as I don't know enough about unix yet to check.

Since 2 people on here have issues with the current piratebox script where you just manually put files on the USB drive and boot it, it might be a good idea for the manual install method to be posted somewhere easier to find, and to think about working out how to add the chat/shoutboxto the manual install version. Has anyone got a pogoplug pink working using the current piratebox image?

I'll be playing with the box to see if I can add more features and content to the webpage without breaking anything. I'd really like some kind of bulletin board on there, for the main page's images and files to be in their own directory and for the hosted files to go into organised directories such as "uploads" for anything new so I can remove broken files from the box more easily.

Note to self. When you tell Disk Management in windows 7 to format the last partition on a USB drive as fat32, it'll wipe the first one with your debian install on it...

I m preparing a piratebox, but i am aiming to make it significatly smaller; i was wondering if with the dockstar it was possilbe ;
i guess i will contribute here ;
good luck to you ; the one i m preparing should be a 1to device in the end with self alimentation on old comp battery ;

Yes the dockstar is smaller than the pogoplug as the pogoplug has its mains power converter built in. I would also recommend the dockstar from the sole point of view as that is what David Darts is using so the newer version works without having to mess about with it as much as I have in order to make it work. I only used the pogoplug because it was cheaper and size wasn't an issue for me.