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[JohnnyDemonic]

A stable version of Alt-F has been available for the DNS-321/323 for along time now.  Here's an FAQ
DNS-321/323 - Alternative Firmware - Alt-F.

Earlier this year, a new version was released that supports the DNS-320L (I presume this is the file you are referencing). There are a good number of members on this forum who have been using Alt-F for years on their DNS-321/323. This latest DNS-320L is fairly new -- I haven't gotten around to updating the FAQ post to reflect this latest version. Thus far, I haven't read any accounts of members in this forum installing Alt-F on the DNS-320L.

I just went through this exercise yesterday actually.  Alt-F works nicely, very nicely, however there are 2 issues that I could not live with and had to revert back to stock firmware at least until those are resolved.
1. Fan control.  There is none or at least not for me.  It would spin the fan full throttle for about 10 seconds, then spin half throttle for 10 to 20 seconds then keep cycling.
2. The led lights.  May seem small to everone, but the drive lights would not power on unless there was degrading of the raid(orange).  In retrospect that might have been nice to have in stock as well.

There were some other little things but they were too minor and I have already forgotten them.

[pittnuma]

Did you flash all the patches?

How did you find the process? Simply flash the Alt-F and away you go or did you have a number of steps to go through.

I am still undecided (I have a large (250gig) p2p going at present so cannot interrupt that but I am still considering).

[JohnnyDemonic]

Patches, I know the developer and another person were doing TS going back and forth with no apparent resolution or none that I could follow in the threads they had going.  As for the "Fixes" options, yes, I applied those that seemed to affect me.  But even the overall System service would fail to "Start" if you are familiar you know they have a Start and Stop button, it was the service that included fan detection and temperature.  Sorry but I do not remember the exact name of the service.

Also the firmware was not able to properly detect the board itself.  One page displayed 320l-rev A1 when it is an A3 board.  So I did what any unknowing person would do, reverted back to stock.

[JohnnyDemonic]

I have now flashed all the pertinent patches and the device is now working flawlessly.  This little exercise was a learning curve but even so I am finding I am getting a little more comfortable with Linux as a whole.  Now the only thing I need Alt-F to allow is the formatting of my external Vantec raid connected via USB as a single unit.  Seems Alt-F chokes when more than 1 USB device is attached and refuses to "partition" if more than a single USB device is attached.

[Nominal320]

Yes Alt-F does work! Tested with a DNS320L, Hardware revision A3. The A3 firmware is in the experimental folder, I used this one: Alt-F-0.1RC4.1.1-DNS-320L-rev-A1A2A3.bin

I bought this NAS as a backup to my Synology NAS. I thought it was better to have a different NAS as backup in-case they get hacked or get a bad upgrade, I don't lose both at the same time.

My experience with DLink has not been good, I couldn't get rsync to work with any rsync server, the Backup services on the 320L don't seem to be RSync either. Only CIFS seems to work, and then only 1 CIF share per volume. Very frustrating interface, very shallow feature set, not a patch on a DS213, but then you pay for what you get and its a third the price.

Works nicely now I have ALT-F on it, with the following caveats.

You will lose everything after install, its a fresh start. When it reboots, the server was called DNS325, look in Windows Networks to find it, and use the web page. The web interface is basic but functional. When you make changes, be sure to go to 'settings' and click the 'SaveSettings' button. As its linux, the admin account becomes 'root'.

Took a bit of twiddling to figure out how rsync works, but it does work and work well.
For those familiar with Linux you have all the regular stuff, perl berkely, httpd, tranmission (bittorrent), cron for scheduling, ftp, dnla, iTunes server etc..

I'm looking through the Alt-F packages, lots and lots of good packages, stuff like a video thumbnail generator.
OpenVPN,PPTP, Samba, Disk encryption, Python, Roku media server, lots and lots of packages.

Missing things? Well you lose the power on off schedule, it goes into idle though.

All in all, nice. Without Alt-F distro I would have binned this product in frustration.