OpenBSD Journal

New OpenBSD Platform: I-O Data LANDISK

Contributed by dwc on from the less is more dept.

After a lot of good work by Dale Rahn (drahn@), Miod Vallat (miod@), Michael Shalayeff (mickey@), Theo de Raadt (deraadt@) and others, the new landisk platform for USL-5P and related machines is now stable enough to be official. This platform uses the Hitachi SuperH-4 processor (SH7751R), a 32-bit RISC chip popular for high performance embedded applications. Some other I-O Data models using ARM-based processors are supported under the armish platform.

Supported hardware includes the onboard re(4) 100Mbit ethernet, CF socket as wd(4), IDE drive as pciide(4), and USB as ehci(4) and ohci(4), and a 9600 baud serial console with some special cabling.

Support for high capacity disks and many USB devices makes this a nice complement to other supported platforms, and opens up new possibilities where you want a small, low-power appliance. It also opens the door for other SuperH based devices. Though reliable now, this port is still in active development so expect to see more support coming up.

(Comments are closed)


Comments
  1. By ddp (ddpbsd) ddpbsd@gmail.com on http://undeadly.org

    I'm not sure exactly why, but this is one of the few architectures I've been interested in lately. It's probably the small footprint/power usage aspect.

    Comments
    1. By Anonymous Coward (24.37.236.100) on

      > I'm not sure exactly why, but this is one of the few architectures I've been interested in lately. It's probably the small footprint/power usage aspect.

      How much do these go for, on average? And do they have 3+ NICS?

      Comments
      1. By theomen (68.227.166.222) on

        It looks like the Sega Dreamcast uses the SuperH-4. Any non-gaming devices that could be used?

        Comments
        1. By ea1x (81.56.211.110) on

          > It looks like the Sega Dreamcast uses the SuperH-4. Any non-gaming devices that could be used?
          >

          it will be cool on the dreamcast :)

      2. By Anonymous Coward (83.5.213.177) on


        http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.iodata.jp%2Fprod%2Fstorage%2Fhdd%2F2004%2Fusl-5p%2Findex.htm&langpair=ja%7Cen&hl=en&ie=UTF8

        1000 Yen = 6.37 EUR

      3. By Brad (brad) on

        > And do they have 3+ NICS?

        The I-O data unit has one built-in re(4) 10/100 Ethernet adapter, but
        there are 5 USB 2.0 ports where you could plug in USB axe(4)
        Fast Ethernet or Gigabit Ethernet adapters and/or USB wireless
        adapters.

        Comments
        1. By Otto Moerbeek (otto) otto@drijf.net on http://www.drijf.net

          Here's a dmesg of my landisk. I'm running it with root on wd0 (a CF card) and the rest on umass.
          OpenBSD 4.0-current (GENERIC) #2: Fri Dec  8 08:12:05 CET 2006
              otto@muffin.intra.drijf.net:/usr/src/sys/arch/landisk/compile/GENERIC
          I-O DATA USL-5P
          real mem = 67108864 (65536K)
          avail mem = 59080704 (57696K)
          using 844 buffers containing 3457024 bytes (3376K) of memory
          mainbus0 (root)
          cpu0 at mainbus0: HITACHI SH4 266.666 MHz PCLOCK 33.333 MHz
          cpu0: 8KB/32B direct-mapped Instruction cache.
          cpu0: 16KB/32B direct-mapped Data cache.
          cpu0: P0, U0, P3 write-through; P1 write-through
          cpu0: full-associative 4 ITLB, 64 UTLB entries
          cpu0: multiple virtual storage mode, SQ access: kernel, wired 61
          shb0 at mainbus0
          scif0 at shb0
          scif0: console
          rsclock0 at shb0: RS5C313 real time clock
          shpcic0 at mainbus0: HITACHI SH7751R
          pci0 at shpcic0
          re0 at pci0 dev 0 function 0 "Realtek 8139" rev 0x20, RTL8139C+ (0x7480): irq 5, address 00:a0:b0:6c:d0:e8
          rlphy0 at re0 phy 0: RTL internal PHY
          ohci0 at pci0 dev 2 function 0 "NEC USB" rev 0x43: irq 7, version 1.0
          usb0 at ohci0: USB revision 1.0
          uhub0 at usb0
          uhub0: NEC OHCI root hub, rev 1.00/1.00, addr 1
          uhub0: 3 ports with 3 removable, self powered
          ohci1 at pci0 dev 2 function 1 "NEC USB" rev 0x43: irq 8, version 1.0
          usb1 at ohci1: USB revision 1.0
          uhub1 at usb1
          uhub1: NEC OHCI root hub, rev 1.00/1.00, addr 1
          uhub1: 2 ports with 2 removable, self powered
          ehci0 at pci0 dev 2 function 2 "NEC USB" rev 0x04: irq 5
          usb2 at ehci0: USB revision 2.0
          uhub2 at usb2
          uhub2: NEC EHCI root hub, rev 2.00/1.00, addr 1
          uhub2: 5 ports with 5 removable, self powered
          obio0 at mainbus0
          wdc0 at obio0 port 0x14000000-0x1400000f irq 10
          wd0 at wdc0 channel 0 drive 0: 
          wd0: 1-sector PIO, LBA, 125MB, 256000 sectors
          wd0(wdc0:0:0): using BIOS timings
          umass0 at uhub2 port 5 configuration 1 interface 0
          umass0: JMicron USB to ATA/ATAPI Bridge, rev 2.00/1.00, addr 2
          umass0: using SCSI over Bulk-Only
          scsibus0 at umass0: 2 targets
          sd0 at scsibus0 targ 1 lun 0:  SCSI2 0/direct fixed
          sd0: 38166MB, 38166 cyl, 64 head, 32 sec, 512 bytes/sec, 78165360 sec total
          boot device: 
          rootdev=0x1000 rrootdev=0x1000 rawdev=0x1002
          
          Hmmm, looking at that dmesg it's time to update....

          Working to get landisk going was very nice. I hunted down a few userland bugs (mostly related to floating point) and a gcc code generation bug that caused landisk to be unstable. Since the platform is pretty slow even when using umass (I used to run it on a 1G Cf card, which is even more slow) it requires patience and a lot of thinking before you act. You don't wanna spoil a make build, it lasts a few days. Luckily there's room left for speed improvements.

          Comments
          1. By ea1x (81.56.211.110) on

            > Here's a dmesg of my landisk. I'm running it with root on wd0 (a CF card) and the rest on umass.


            and what about network performance and transfer ?

            Comments
            1. By Otto Moerbeek (otto) otto@drijf.net on http://www.drijf.net

              > > Here's a dmesg of my landisk. I'm running it with root on wd0 (a CF card) and the rest on umass.
              >
              >
              > and what about network performance and transfer ?

              some quick, rough measurements:

              CF read varies a lot, but it averages to about 500kB/s. CF write is about 60k/s.
              umass read and write to filesystem (using dd with 64k blocksize) about 8MB/s.
              ftp about 3.4MB/s
              scp about 500kB/s

              Probably I shouldn't wonder why somebody modded my previous post down. There's trolls everywhere.

              Comments
              1. By grg (grg) on

                > Probably I shouldn't wonder why somebody modded my previous post down. There's trolls everywhere.

                I think its time the moderation feature was removed from undeadly. Its not useful in its current form anyway.

                Comments
                1. By sthen (85.158.44.146) on

                  > > Probably I shouldn't wonder why somebody modded my previous post down. There's trolls everywhere.
                  >
                  > I think its time the moderation feature was removed from undeadly. Its not useful in its current form anyway.

                  It gives people something to do and I think it probably saves some "me too"s...

    2. By Anonymous Coward (70.179.123.124) on

      > I'm not sure exactly why, but this is one of the few architectures I've been interested in lately. It's probably the small footprint/power usage aspect.

      I'm thinking the beer in the photo had something to do with that :)

  2. By cnst (cnst) on http://cnst.livejournal.com/tag/openbsd

    Let's do some froogle for hardware listed on openbsd.org/landisk.html: 
    
    The following items don't return anything:
    # IO-DATA USL-5P, using CF storage (Japan; as shown)
    # IO-DATA HDL-U, HDL-AV, HDL-W and HDLM-U series (Japan)
    # SuperTank LAN Tank (SOTO-HDLWU) (Japan)
    
    The following items have some hits:
    # IO-DATA UHDL-160U and UHDL-300U (May be found in USA)
    # Plextor PX-EH16L, PX-EH25L and PX-EH40L
    
    Here are the details:
    
    IO-DATA
    UHDL-160U -- 149 USD, 4 sellers, but it looks like noone stocks it ATM...
    UHDL-300U -- 199 USD, 4 sellers, but it looks like noone stocks it ATM...
    
    Plextor
    PX-EH16L -- only one seller -- 209 EUR from Germany.
    PX-EH25L -- many sellers all around (173), starting from 207,50 USD from shop.com
    PX-EH40L -- many sellers (183), starting from ~375 USD from newegg.com
    
    

    Comments
    1. By sthen (85.158.44.146) on

      Anyone know what this is?

      Comments
      1. By anonymoustroll (203.160.31.227) anonymoustroll@gmail.com on

        > Anyone know what

        Yeah... it's yet another bring your own disk NAS boxen.

        ...and for the record V-Gear "LanDisk" sucks ass; if *ANYONE* could use an OpenBSD upgrade, it would be them... their implementation of SMB shares has all sorts of weirdness going on: no spaces in share names, file completion doesn't work, weird path length limits, choppy play-back of vide files and on and on. I consider V-Gear's firmware to be a shining example of when linux is *NOT* done right on the embedded side of the house. The damned thing in only worth the money for the aluminum enclsure that you get out of the deal.

        Comments
        1. By sthen (85.158.44.146) on

          > > Anyone know what
          >
          > Yeah... it's yet another bring your own disk NAS boxen.

          Pretty similar to the boxes supported by OpenBSD/landisk then (ok, well apart from the tiny USL-5P they come with drives supplied, but see what I mean?).

          I suspect they are different hardware (the various disk-containing boxes mentioned - lantank, hdl-u, plextor - all look quite similar to each other, and different to these) but just thought I'd ask around in case anyone knows better.

          Comments
          1. By Steve Shockley (66.28.244.19) on

            > I suspect they are different hardware (the various disk-containing boxes mentioned - lantank, hdl-u, plextor - all look quite similar to each other, and different to these) but just thought I'd ask around in case anyone knows better.

            If I had to guess, I'd say it might be a http://www.rdc.com.tw/eng/product_more.asp?pid=63.

            Comments
            1. By sthen (85.158.44.148) on

              > > I suspect they are different hardware (the various disk-containing boxes mentioned - lantank, hdl-u, plextor - all look quite similar to each other, and different to these) but just thought I'd ask around in case anyone knows better.
              >
              > If I had to guess, I'd say it might be a http://www.rdc.com.tw/eng/product_more.asp?pid=63.

              RDC is the clue I needed, thanks Steve. These boxes use R2882 and are aka NS-347; much less interesting than USL-5P then. (Thanks also to ebay for providing a venue for such a wealth of information on cheap chinese ju^H^Helectronic devices).

  3. By Anonymous Coward (83.5.213.177) on

    also these two evaluation and development boards:

    http://www.shlinux.com/products/edosk7751r.htm
    http://www.shlinux.com/products/systemh.htm

  4. By anonymoustroll (203.160.31.227) anonymoustroll@gmail.com on

    Ok.... this is nice.

    Question: can it connect to iSCSI targets (or should I just wait until thumb/pen disks drop below $15 per gig?)?

  5. By Motley Fool (MotleyFool) motleyfool@dieselrepower.org on

    They're pretty cool little boxes. I have a 250GB Plextor in the office I plan on running NFS on.

    I installed a pin header on the RS232 serial pads and brought the lines out the back of the unit with an RJ10/RJ22 handset jack so I can use my embedded system serial cable with it. I wanted to use my MAX232 RS232 level shifter cable for other things than the Plextor.

  6. By Anonymous Coward (83.5.225.133) on

    I seem to have developed a fondness for small things, while not ARM-based, this one looks quite cool and attractively priced, anyone know if it would run OpenBSD?

    http://www.ipc2u.de/catalog/E/EE/

    Comments
    1. By mike (mike) on

      or would armish run on this?

      http://www.acrosser.com/Product/Networking%20applicance/Firewall-X-Series/Firewall_xscale_m9931.html

  7. By anonymoustroll (203.160.31.227) anonymoustroll@gmail.com on

    Any chance of getting OpenBSD ported to something like this:

    http://www.kuroutoshikou.com/products/kuro-box/kuro-box_hgfset.html

    I might even know someone who would pay a couple of $100 to $k to make it happen.

Credits

Copyright © - Daniel Hartmeier. All rights reserved. Articles and comments are copyright their respective authors, submission implies license to publish on this web site. Contents of the archive prior to as well as images and HTML templates were copied from the fabulous original deadly.org with Jose's and Jim's kind permission. This journal runs as CGI with httpd(8) on OpenBSD, the source code is BSD licensed. undeadly \Un*dead"ly\, a. Not subject to death; immortal. [Obs.]