I recommend htop for any Linksys NSLU2 owner whos ‘unlsung their slug’.

htop is a package that can be installed through ipkg using the following command (as root)

ipkg install htop

Once installed, just type ‘htop’ to run the process viewer.

It’s a curses based process viewer that lets you see, sort and kill processes running on the NSLU2.

Click the image to see it actual sized.

Now that I’ve managed to copy all my important files onto the USB disk plugged into DISK1 of my NSLU2, I wanted to make sure I kept a backup of everything, and decided a good strategy would be to mirror files to the hard disk plugged into DISK2 (via my USB hub) of the NSLU2.

After looking at the linksys web tool and realising the backup stuff doesn’t work properly, I went looking for a smart way to do this, and settled on RSYNC, which can be installed via IPKG.

I use RSYNC to copy changes to a directory from one disk to another, and then have this scheduled to run once a week.  I created a number of scripts to backup certain directories, and then schedule these to run on different nights of the week.

The script looks like the following:

#!/bin/sh

before="$(date +%s)"

fromdir="/home/user/"

todir="/share/flash/data/backup/user/"

logfile="/var/log/backup_users.log"

Set_Led beep2

date >$logfile

echo "----------------------------" >>$logfile

/opt/bin/rsync -avrlHpEog $fromdir $todir >>$logfile

echo "----------------------------" >>$logfile

after="$(date +%s)"

elapsed_seconds="$(expr $after - $before)"

date >>$logfile

echo Elapsed time: $elapsed_seconds secs >>$logfile

Set_Led beep1

And then I change the fromdir/todir and logfile depending on what I’m backing up.  I’ve also put some time recording into the log file, and some beep commands so you know when its starting and finishing should you be using the NSLU2 at the time.
The only thing left is to schedule this through CRON.  I created a symbollic link into /etc/cron.daily then added the entries.  The run-parts command for cron doesn’t work on the default version with the NSLU2, hence why you have to add each entry.

My 3 cron entries I have for backups are as follows:

01 0 * * 0  /etc/cron.daily/backupUserDirs.sh

01 0 * * 1  /etc/cron.daily/backupRestorePC.sh

01 0 * * 2  /etc/cron.daily/backupMultimedia.sh

My only criticism – because the NSLU2 is pretty slow, RSYNC can take a while – but then I don’t care as it scheduled to run when I’m not doing anything on my NSLU2.  The other tip – copy the files yourself before running a sync – if you make RSYNC do all the work, it could take a while!

I’ve succesfully compiled figlet on my NSLU2.

FIGlet is a program that creates large characters out of ordinary screen characters

FIGlet can create characters in many different styles and can kern and “smush” these characters together in various ways.  FIGlet output is generally reminiscent of the sort of “signatures” many people like to put at the end of e-mail and UseNet messages.This is available to download from the following link as an NSLU2 binary.  Simply untar somewhere useful, make it executable and run it!

[download#18#nohits]