I recently purchased a seagate dockstar off buy.com for $25 with free shipping. For those of you in the know, its essentially a Marvell sheevaplug with less memory and flash size. Its still got the same 1.2ghz proc and built around the same platform, and even though its slightly less on the specs, it makes up for it with USB ports and the fact thats its ONLY 25 bucks.
Seagate Dockstar
After setting up the dockstar, I installed openpogo as I wanted it to replace my NSLU2 which was acting as a transmission bit-torrent downloader and Asterisk PBX. It all installed pretty much ok, but with the exception of setting a static IP for the unit. I initially just set the DHCP options in my router to give it a static IP, but I wanted to know if there was an easy way to do this with the pogoplug software. I ended up emailing pogo support and below is what they told me:
Please read through these instructions carefully. Applying them improperly will result in a bricked or inoperable Pogoplug. By the way, we already have logged an enhancement request to add this functionality in the Web interface at my.pogoplug.com though I have no information regarding a release date for such an update.
You will need to first activate Pogoplug using the default setup I.S.P. modem => router => Pogoplug with an functioning DHCP Server.
Next enable SSH: To enable SSH, login to http://my.pogoplug.com, navigate to the Settings page, select Security Settings, and from the main pane, enable SSH for your Pogoplug. Choose your own SSH password.
Now SSH into your Pogoplug with the username: root and the password you set previously.
At the bash shell prompt, you can assign a static IP just as you would on any linux machine. For this example, I will use eth0:3 aliased interface so we don’t lose our current static IP we are using for SSH. I will also assume my new static IP to be assigned is 192.168.77.3 and the default route gateway is 192.168.77.1 and the DNS name server is 192.168.77.2
To persist these changes after a power loss or reboot of the pogoplug, issue the following commands at the bash prompt.
-bash-3.2# mount / -o remount,rw,noatime
-bash-3.2# echo ‘ifconfig eth0:3 192.168.77.3 netmask 255.255.255.0’ >> /etc/init.d/rcS
-bash-3.2# echo ‘route add default gw 192.168.77.1’ >> /etc/init.d/rcS
-bash-3.2# echo ‘echo “nameserver 192.168.77.2” > /etc/resolv.conf’ >> /etc/init.d/rcS
-bash-3.2# mount / -o remount,ro
-bash-3.2#
When done properly, your Pogoplug should continue to function when attached to a DHCP network.
I wanted to post this because I could not easily find it online or in their forums, so I thought this could save someone the time and hassle of contacting their technical support.
hi there,
i came across your blow while searching for openpogo and docstar. I too got one of these from woot and am trying to install pytivo but seem to have a problem.
I did install openpogo but am not able to get tmp/mount_opt to be created that is needed to link the opt folder in the usb.
did u install openpogo on usb ?
do u have any good tutorial to install openpogo on usb? Also, i was trying to access the drive from my Kodak hd player and am not able to mount the pogo drive. My primary purpose was to use docstar as a NAS and have it do the torrent and be able to serve the files for streaming player. But so far no luck. I would really appreciate if you could pass me some links..
thanks
us.
Hey there,
Make sure you follow this guide to install openpogo exactly. Especially the part where it tells you how to make a symlink using the “ln -s /tmp/mnt_opt/.opt /opt” command.
http://www.plugapps.com/index.php5?title=OpenPogo:Installing_Base_Package_-_USB
As for installing applications like transmission-bt to use your dockstar as a bittorrent downloader, check out this page…
http://www.plugapps.com/index.php5?title=Portal:OpenPogo
If you want to share out a drive to be mounted from another computer, best and easiest way to do that is by logging into your my.pogoplug.com and then creating and sharing out a folder on the drive (such as ‘Downloads’). Then, map this folder to be used for your downloaded torrents in transmission…(ig. specifying /tmp/.cemnt/mnt_sda1/Downloads as the download directory).
But remember, when first configuring your dockstar upon logging into it via SSH, youll have to make the drive writeable since it is by default (and after reboot), set to read only permissions. Use “mount -o rw,remount /” without the ” signs to do that.
Hope this helps…information takes a bit to search and find, but theres enough info out there to get your dockstar up and running the way you want it. Thanks for visiting!
So that I am now considering to get a low power seedbox to run bit torrent 24×7 (Downloading HD movies) ; I was looking for pogo/dockstar/sheevaplug type of thing and got ur article..
Could you please share your experience hows the performance of this ‘Dockstar’ which has 128M RAM / 256M ROM? Or you think sheevaplug 512/512 would be good ?
Hi tushar,
The seagate dockstar with its slightly less beefy configuration runs excellent as a bittorrent client. I can always access the web interface even when downloading several large files at once (on my nslu2 with 266mhz 32mb ram, when i would download several large downlads at the same time, it would lock up the web gui because it would use around 90-99% cpu).
I have never maxed out the CPU and memory while downloading with transmission (running at 12mbit down, and im also running asterisk at the same time which pushes about %18 cpu). I think the highest I ever got was maybe 70%-ish cpu usage, and I can still stream video content from the dockstar to my computer at the same time.
For only $25, you might as well try it out vs the $100 sheevaplug with beefier configuration…plus I think it has more usb ports which is very useful.