Futro S230 as NAS and Squeezebox Server

Moderator: ModTeam

marlar
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Jul 30, 2010 16:10
Product(s): Futro S230

Futro S230 as NAS and Squeezebox Server

Postby marlar » Mon Aug 02, 2010 22:49

Hi,

I am new here and I hope this is the right forum for my inquiry :-)

I have bought a second-hand Futro S230 thin client. My aim is to build a lightweight, silent and power saving NAS and Squeezebox Server. So far this has proven surprisingly succesful, but I have a few questions.

1.
I first tried to install FreeNAS as this seemed to be obvious path to go. However, I cannot even boot the liveCD; FreeNAS fails with a "Cannot load Kernel" error. Has anyone succeeded installing FreeNAS on the Futro S2xx series?

2.
Instead I installed Debian using their NetInstaller in order to keep the installation lean. I installed on a 4 GB USB stick as the internal 256MB flash memory is not enough. Initially I had some boot problems, but it turned out that the computer wanted to boot from the internal flash card, so I just removed it and tried again. Then it worked flawlessly, and I continued installing the additional packages I needed, including the Squeezebox Server. To my surprise, the response from the server was very very good and it worked better than expected! Indeed much better than my existing Synology DS-106 NAS.

I am quite satisfied with the above solution, but it would be more convenient to have the OS residing inside the thin client. Consequently I took the 2 GB fast Sandisk CF-card from my camera and inserted it in the computer. The Debian installation went fine, but booting the newly installed OS was EXTREMELY slow. There were no errors, each step in the boot process just took ages, and after one hour I gave up.

I was puzzled by this poor perfomance, knowing that my memory card was very fast, so I got the idea to insert in into my USB card reader and plug it into one of the USB connectors. Now the OS booted very fast!!!

Can someone explain why the internal card reader is so slow compared to the USB ports?

3. Inside the box are two connectors. What are these for? Are they for attaching floppy and hard drives? See attachments.

Thanks in advance,
Martin
Attachments
02082010544.jpg
02082010544.jpg (15.59 KiB) Viewed 9322 times
02082010541.jpg
02082010541.jpg (18.6 KiB) Viewed 9322 times

Return to “Thin Clients”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest