On Sat, Aug 04, 2012 at 01:18:41PM +0200, Spitz, Richard wrote: > What is the real advantage of running Debian on a NAS? I'm presently using > a NSLU2 under Debian for collecting and graphing energy data in my home. > Now I need a NAS, whose primary purpose is central data storage and > backup, while using a minimal amount of energy. I am concerned that > running Debian on the NAS and make it take over the NSLU2's tasks might > counteract the energy saving features of the NAS, such as disk spindown. > > Any ideas or experience on this?
You're asking two separate questions here, and they're completely unrelated. 1) What is the real advantage of running Debian on a NAS? 2) Will doing more things on a machine cause it to use more power? The real advantage of running Debian on a NAS is the same as replacing the shipped OS on any embedded device -- being able to make the device do what *you* want it to do, rather than whatever incomplete set of features the manufacturer decided it could produce for minimal cost. You've already identified one possibility -- data capture and graphing -- but there are so many more. I enjoy the ability to run a *functional* uPnP-AV server, an NFS server, and my choice of centralised backup software on my NAS running Debian. The answer to (2) is almost certainly "yes" -- non-idle CPU cycles cost power. Depending on what you need to do, though, you don't necessarily need to have the disks spin-up constantly. You could cache data onto a USB stick, and then once a $TIMEPERIOD run a cronjob to take all that cached data and store it to disk (causing the disk to only spin up once per $TIMEPERIOD). I wouldn't rely on a USB stick as primary storage, but as long as you can stand to potentially lose $TIMEPERIOD's worth of data, the risk of using a fairly unreliable means of data storage is acceptable. - Matt -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-arm-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120804213434.gf2...@hezmatt.org