FAQ about Debian on Linksys NSLU2

Is Debian on the NSLU2 fully supported?

Debian 8 (jessie) was the last release to include some support for the Linksys NSLU2. There is no installer but you can install a tar ball of Debian 7 and then upgrade to Debian 8.

Please note that Debian 8 was the last release to support the NSLU2. There is no support in Debian 9 (stretch) or Debian 10 (buster).

The NSLU2 is slow... what alternatives are there to the NSLU2?

While the NSLU2 is a nice device, it only offers a 133 or 266 MHz CPU and 32 MB of RAM. You therefore cannot expect particularly good performance. A modern alternative to the NSLU2 is the Marvell SheevaPlug which is also supported by Debian.

Why does my NSLU2 no longer boot?

There can me many different reasons for this. Please see the troubleshooting page for some things you can try.

How do upgrades work?

Upgrades with Debian on the NSLU2 work like on any other Debian system. You can simply use apt-get or aptitude for upgrades:

apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade

How can I upgrade the kernel? Is it written to flash automatically?

Debian will take of everything automatically. When you install a Debian kernel package, a tool called flash-kernel will automatically write the new kernel and ramdisk to flash.

How can I make a backup of flash?

You can make a backup of the flash of your NSLU2 with the following command:

cat /dev/mtdblock* > nslu2-backup