GuruPlug (Kirkwood)

GuruPlug (Kirkwood)

Kirkwood Series

Kirkwood processors were developed for network connected consumer electronic equipment that are used in gateway/access point, set-top boxes, network storage, digital home media servers, point of services terminal, and plug computers (sheevaplug, dreamplug, guruplug, etc).

Plug Computers

A plug computer is a small form factor server, intended to provide network-based services within the home. These ARM based devices provides always-on, always-connected, and environmentally-friendly computing that is readily available for developers.

GuruPlugs

The Guruplugs are one of the popular plug computers. More information on Guruplugs
Below is the technical specifications for a typical GuruPlug Server Plus

Technical Specifications

• 1.0 Ghz - 1.2 Ghz Processor (Marvell 88F6281)
• 512 MB 16-bit DDR2 RAM
• 512 MB NAND Flash
• 802.11 b/g WiFi
• SATA 2.0 port (eSATA)
• 2 x Gigabit Ethernet
• 2 x 16550 compatible UART interfaces (external JTAG adapter)
• 2 x USB 2.0 ports
• 1 x MicroSD Slot

Running Fedora on a Kirkwood Device

This page will give a user detailed instructions for running Fedora 18 on a Kirkwood based device. The F18 image provides a user with a minimal text based installation to a serial console. At the moment there is no GUI image available. F18 image has been tested to run on GuruPlug Server Plus using microSD card and a USB thumb drive, but should also work for other devices based on the Kirkwood SOC.

Downloading the image

The first step is to download the F18 image. The prebuilt images include kernels and can be written directly to an storage medium such as an (micro)SD Card or an USB stick and requires additional steps (uboot configurations) to boot. The serial console image requires a minimum storage medium size of 4GB.

GuruPlug Image

Writing the Image

Please be aware that writing the image to any drive (SD/microSD/USB/Hard Drive) will erase any existing data in that drive. Please make sure that the card is not write protected.

Linux Users

The image can be written to any storage device as long as it meets the minimum size requirements noted above (4GB for the serial image)

• Connect the device or card to a computer and make a note of the device file in /dev.
• To write the image to to the device run the following command (Please adjust the path in /dev)

xzcat Fedora-18-kirkwood-arm.img.xz > /dev/<location-of-storage-device>

• Once completed run the command below to ensure the entire image is written to the storage

sync