Home ›

Hacking Your Portable Linux Server

Issue 183

From Issue #183
July 2009

Jul 01, 2009  By Federico Lucifredi
 in
Turn a Western Digital MyBook II into a personalized, portable Linux server.
Conclusion

The WD Mybook II World Edition is clearly a device warranting the attention of hardware hackers looking for a small, cheap, low-power platform on which to build their projects. Western Digital's wisdom in not stripping the system portion of the device should be recognized in that it has provided us with a wonderful target for our tinkering. Although sporting only 98 BogoMIPS, its hardware has unusual capabilities (hardware AES encryption and native support for Java bytecode among them) that provide further application levers for our appliance-building projects. I introduced here the hardware, its capabilities, how to breach its security and how to enable it with top-class network configuration at bootup on nearly any network. I hope you, the reader, will follow me and others in this exploration of what our imaginations can make of this small hardware wonder.

Resources

Enabling SSH Access on MyBook World Edition, by Martin Hinner: martin.hinner.info/mybook/sshaccess.php

How to Set Up My Book World Edition II, by Paul Henman: henman.livejournal.com/1161953.html

SendXMPP: sendxmpp.platon.sk

CPAN (Comprehensive Perl Archive Network): www.cpan.org

Daemon-less Wide-Area DNS Update, by Federico Lucifredi: primates.ximian.com/~flucifredi/dns-update.html

Using SSH and FTP on Western Digital MyBook Word, by Edouard Brière: www.nanalegumene.net/using-ssh-and-ftp-on-western-digital-mybook-world

BiTtorrent on Mybook World: done, by Edouard Brière: www.nanalegumene.net/bittorrent-on-mybook-world-done

Binaries for Gumstix Board: www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/Optware/Gumstix

Federico Lucifredi is the maintainer of “man” as well as the Systems Management Product Manager for the OpenSUSE and SUSE Linux Enterprise product lines at Novell. He loves to tinker with old hardware and build contraptions that puzzle his colleagues.

______________________

Webcast
More Resources
How to Build an Optimal Hadoop Cluster to Store and Maintain Unlimited Amounts of Data Using Microservers

Realizing the promise of Apache® Hadoop® requires the effective deployment of compute, memory, storage and networking to achieve optimal results. With its flexibility and multitude of options, it is easy to over or under provision the server infrastructure, resulting in poor performance and high TCO. Join us for an in depth, technical discussion with industry experts from leading Hadoop and server companies who will provide insights into the key considerations for designing and deploying an optimal Hadoop cluster.

Learn More

Sponsored by AMD

White Paper
More Resources
Red Hat White Paper: Using an Open Source Framework to Catch the Bad Guy

Built-in forensics, incident response, and security with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6

Every security policy provides guidance and requirements for ensuring adequate protection of information and data, as well as high-level technical and administrative security requirements for a system in a given environment. Traditionally, providing security for a system focuses on the confidentiality of the information on it. However, protecting the data integrity and system and data availability is just as important. For example, when processing United States intelligence information, there are three attributes that require protection: confidentiality, integrity, and availability.

Learn more about catching the bad guy in this free white paper.

Learn More

Sponsored by DLT Solutions