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[Disk1of5]

Hi D-link Dev Team,
I'm new to the forum and started reading over your posts about this beta 1.08 and saw that one of the hindering part of rolling out new firm ware is your flash rom size.
i have seen other projects get crippled by similar size limitations (for example DD-WRT)

just out of curiosity as a Developer my self, i started thinking about this dilemma,
have you ever thought of having the USB flash drive support for holding an external firmware version.
The basic idea is that your DNS 323 would hold a basic on board firmware in the situation that there is no USB drive present (or corrupted) and this external USB drive would hold an "more featured" firmware version.

Granted this solution wouldn't be for most "basic users" but this solution would be and great option and would solve the current problems for your development team and even the homebrew community.

The best part of this is lets say the device gets bricked due to a beta firmware version OR home brew development, all that is required is booting back on to your on board 8mb firmware and pushing a new version to the external drive using your admin page.

I think that this kind of functionality would increase the life of your older products and would allow D-Link DNS-232 to appeal to more of a technical niche market and allowing more sales.

Now down to the semi technical portion 
Method 1:
(if at all possible )
you would need to create a boot loader that resides on the on board that would determine whether or not to load the USB drive or to use a compressed firmware image (that i guess would mean that your "basic" firmware is nothing but a boot loader with a compressed basic firmware image that can be loaded in the case of no USB drive)
technically this means that you could use 2 different linux kernels, one on the 8mb flash and one on the external drive (although i don't think it would be a good idea)

Method 2:
If the current DNS 323 hardware(onboard bios if one even resides) supports the ability to be upgrade to allow this sort of functionality this would cut your development time in half in theory


any how.. just putting it out there

Thanks!
 -Disk1of5.

[fordem]

Wouldn't it be simpler to have the bootstrap loader just grab the OS off of one of the disks - isn't this how Intel based PCs have worked for the last three decades?

[Disk1of5]

Wouldn't it be simpler to have the bootstrap loader just grab the OS off of one of the disks - isn't this how Intel based PCs have worked for the last three decades?

yes, but that falls more along the line of Method2
if this functionality is something the hardware can be made to do easily.

Method 1 replicates this functionality by making the firmware it-self the bootstrap+a compressed light release of the firmware.

[fordem]

Google!  There are folks out there running Debian & Gentoo on their DNS-323 - it's not sanctioned by D-Link but the means to do so already exists.

The advantage that a NAS has over a router, is that a NAS has storage above & beyond what's soldered to the board.

[Disk1of5]

Google!  There are folks out there running Debian & Gentoo on their DNS-323 - it's not sanctioned by D-Link but the means to do so already exists.

The advantage that a NAS has over a router, is that a NAS has storage above & beyond what's soldered to the board.

Hi fordem, i agree with you.
These home-brew modifications can be achieved.
I disagree on the NAS vs router argument on the basis that newer routers are being released with USB multimedia support so possibilities with these devices are  not limited to "whats soldered to the board"

That being said my suggestion is to adapt the USB storage technique to the Dlink dev team.
And the reason i suggest utilizing the USB is so that DNS 323 HD storage space isn't being utilized by firmware/ linux OS.

-Thanks

[zehninguem]

The new introduced capability (1.08) to run "applications" could be used to solve some of these ROM issues. FTP, UPNP media and player and iTunes media player, are some of the features that today are "embedded" into the firmware that could be moved out into an application mode leaving ROM space to other important implementations. Additional functionality can be implemented using the same framework that was used by the sample applications provided with 1.08 beta version, being a rsync or better backup tool a must have.
Also, the publication of the process to produce the applications would enhance considerably the community around the DNS-323 without the need to install fun-plug that although its huge value has problems with shutdown process requiring complex scripts to guarantee disk integrity.

[thebeck]

The new introduced capability (1.08) to run "applications" could be used to solve some of these ROM issues. FTP, UPNP media and player and iTunes media player, are some of the features that today are "embedded" into the firmware that could be moved out into an application mode leaving ROM space to other important implementations. Additional functionality can be implemented using the same framework that was used by the sample applications provided with 1.08 beta version, being a rsync or better backup tool a must have.

I think this is a great idea!  Assuming the APKG can expose a management UI (like what is currently exposed for FTP, UPnP, iTunes, etc.), this becomes an excellent approach for implementing more complex features in the firmware (e.g., S.M.A.R.T. hard drive monitoring which is currently possible in the DNS-343, but not the DNS-323 due to current lack of ROM availability; a more modern linux kernel like 2.6.26+; more comprehensive logging and email support; built in USB drive support, etc.).

[janekx]

So no one from Dlink answer? I thing that they try it, but when remove HDDs from NAS some features will be lost, but NAS can work and you can install it again same way like torrent.
This is not good solution for basic users, then they can bring a suit against Dlink that something .... something as is in USA usual