OpenWrt Kamikaze supports the NSLU2. See the KnownProblems page for known problems with the Kamikaze 7.07 release.

You can either build kamikaze or download the kamikaze-7.07 image from http://www.slug-firmware.net. Installation is the same in both cases.

From the HomePage, "The OpenWrt Kamikaze 7.09 release of firmware is in beta testing. A binary firmware download can be found at http://www.slug-firmware.net. Please report beta testing results to the nslu2-linux mailing list."

To build, follow the OpenWrt BuildInstructions for the Intel XScale IXP4xx [2.6] target system (you can use the "Image configuration" section to set up your initial network configuration), and then flash the openwrt-nslu2-2.6-squashfs.bin 8MB image in the normal way. You can also use the "make openwrt-image" target in the Master Makefile.

After installation, OpenWrt will take a few minutes to initialize the JFFS2 partition. It took about five minutes for me. You should wait at least ten minutes before rebooting. It will have an IP address of 192.168.1.77 to which you need to telnet to get access for the first time.

There is some good documentation at http://nbd.name/openwrt.html. See also the OpenWrt wiki entry for the NSLU2 at OpenWrt wiki, which contains more information.

Here is the BootLog (Kamikaze 7.06).

For assistance, look in the #nslu2-linux (for nslu2-specific installation problems, be aware there will be very few openwrt users in this channel) or #openwrt (for general OpenWrt questions - this is where all the openwrt users hang out) IRC channels on Freenode.

A tip flashing the Kamikaze 7.09 binary firmware:

• DHCP is enabled by default, (this was learned after what appeared several failed attempts to first connect to the NSLU2 at IP address of 192.168.1.77 which had been set using the stock Linksys firmware)

Other notes and references for Openwrt/NSLU2 Kamikaze 7.09:

• ReleaseNotes7x09
• Readme Notes - http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/nslu2/releases/OpenWrt-kamikaze-7.09-README.txt
• An interesting forum post about Kamikaze 7.09 on NSLU2 - http://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=13034

Some user tips!

• By default, the slug uses 192.168.1.77 as the IP address, but you can change that in the network configuration when building. (true for pre-7.09 releases only?)
• By default, both telnet and ssh are installed, but only telnet is enabled. To enable ssh and disable telnet (a very good choice, security-wise), telnet to the slug and then use the 'passwd' command to change your root password. The rest seems to be automatic.
• To change the banner that displays when you log in, edit /etc/banner
• ipkg.sh is not in the webif/web directory so you have to login to a terminal to update/install packages.
• Binary: Mounting is a little off standard, kernel will mount sda1 as ext2 to /mnt/usbdrive. Other partitions can be mounted by creating /etc/fstab and a script (http://www.pug.org/index.php/OpenWRT(approve sites) - Automount for example) that executes it - but does a "sleep 5" (or so) before, so usb wil be available. I consider this pretty dirty, so replace with a better way, if known.

Adding Optware packages to OpenWrt

Optware packages use their own ipkg-opt packaging system that is independend on firmware. This also means that with OpenWrt upgrade package list is not erased as it is stored in /opt partition where also all optware packages are installed.

For USB disk preparation one must first prepare disk partitions with

 ipkg update
ipkg install e2fsprogs cfdisk fdisk swap-utils

Partitioning disk into /opt swap and /home partition can be done with cfdisk /dev/sda or fdisk /dev/sda. Allocate at least 2GB for /opt and 512MB for swap.

Prepare partitions:

root@OpenWrt:/# mkswap /dev/sda2
root@OpenWrt:/# mke2fs -j /dev/sda1
root@OpenWrt:/# swapon /dev/sda2
root@OpenWrt:/# mke2fs -j /dev/sda1

Mount partitions:

root@OpenWrt:/# mkdir /opt
root@OpenWrt:/# mount /dev/sda1 /opt/

For initial installation of Optware package we need to install ipkg-opt package using /usr/bin/ipkg. This can be done by adding

 src optware http://ipkg.nslu2-linux.org/feeds/optware/openwrt-ixp4xx/cross/unstable

to /etc/ipkg.conf using vi editor. Then we proceed with ipkg update and ipkg install ipkg-opt. This will install required /opt/bin/ipkg-opt. I recommend removing the Optware package feeed from /etc/ipkg.conf and add the same line to /opt/etc/ipkg.conf.

It is recommended that default search path is extended to /opt/bin:/opt/bin:$PATH in /etc/profile before issuing /opt/etc/ipkg-opt update and installing aditional optware packages. /etc/profile line should look like

 export PATH=/opt/bin:/opt/sbin:/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin

HowTo's for OpenWRT

• Boot from a memory stick