Installing Debian on the Thecus N2100
While the Thecus N2100 is supported in Debian 7 (wheezy), it is no longer supported in Debian 8 (jessie) or later releases.
Requirements
In order to install Debian on an N2100, you need the following:
- A Thecus N2100 machine or compatible device, such as the Allnet ALL6500.
- Another machine on which you have an SSH client. Every Linux distribution includes an OpenSSH client and there is PuTTY for Windows.
Preparation
There are a number of issues you should be aware of before beginning with the installation:
- You have to be aware that by installing Debian you probably lose the warranty on your N2100.
- The installation of Debian will replace the Thecus firmware that is shipped with your N2100. It is not possible to keep both installed at the same time.
- When you install Debian, it will by default format your whole disk. I therefore recommend to make backup of any data you might have on your machine.
- Make sure that the J3/J4 jumper on your board is set to the J3 position. This is the default position so you should not have to change anything.
Upgrading the Firmware
Before installing Debian, make sure that you are running the latest version of the Thecus firmware. In version 2.1.05 Thecus added the ability to the boot loader used on this machine, RedBoot, to allow users to connect to the machine via telnet while the machine is booting. This gives you a rescue mode in case something goes wrong with the installation. I therefore strongly advise you to upgrade to version 2.1.05 or higher before installing Debian. If you don't have a Thecus N2100, but an Allnet or another box, you first need to make a simple change so that you can upgrade to the Thecus firmware. This change is documented on the Thecus wiki in the page about turning your Allnet into a Thecus.
Starting the Installer
In order to start the installation of Debian, you have to login to the
firmware of your Thecus N2100 to configure the network and to upgrade the
firmware to an installer image of Debian. The N2100 is configured to have
the IP address 192.168.1.100. You can open this address in your web
browser and then login in as admin. The default password is admin.
The way the installation of Debian works is that you flash an upgrade
firmware that will start the installer. The installer will then allow you
to connect via SSH to perform the installation. This works because the
installer will read your network settings from your device and then bring
up SSH so you can connect. That's why it's important to configure the
network settings in the Thecus firmware. If you have used a static
configuration, these values will be used. Otherwise, the installer will
ask a DHCP server in your network for an IP configuration. If the
installer cannot find a DHCP server on your network, it will fall back to
the static configuration that is the default on the N2100, namely the IP
address 192.168.1.100 and a gateway and name server at 192.168.1.1. In
any case, make sure that your network is configured fully, including values
for DNS. If your static IP configuration is not complete (i.e. is either
missing the IP address or DNS), the Debian installer will request an
address via DHCP.
Once you have configured the network, you can go to System, followed by
Firmware Upgrade. First, you have to download the firmware
image provided by Debian for the installation. Afterwards you can
upload this image to the Thecus firmware. It will ask you to confirm that
you want to upgrade to this new version.
Note that the progress bar is not updated during the upgrade process and will remain at 1% until the end.
After a few minutes the upgrade process has completed and you have to reboot the machine:
The system will now restart and after about 5 minutes you can connect to
the installer via SSH. Please ignore your web browser which tells you that
the system is soon restarting because no update will be shown there. When
the web page has finished counting down and says Reboot Complete, the
installer will not be ready yet! You need to wait about another minute.
When the installer is ready to accept connections via SSH, your N2100 will
beep three times. The username is installer and the password is
install. Note that you need a terminal which understands UTF-8 because
that's the character set the installer will use.
ssh installer@192.168.1.100
Installing Debian
The installation itself should be pretty standard and you can follow the installation guide. It knows about the N2100 and at the end of the installation it will flash a kernel and ramdisk that will automatically boot into Debian.
The whole installation will take about one hour. After the installation is
complete, you will be able to log in as root or your newly created user
via SSH.
Usage
Fan
By default, the fan should run at full speed. If you need to regulate the
speed, you can write to the pwm files in /sys. If you want to stop the
fan, you have to write the value zero to these files:
echo 0 > /sys/bus/i2c/devices/0-002e/pwm2 echo 0 > /sys/bus/i2c/devices/0-002e/pwm1
You can activate full speed using the following commands:
echo 255 > /sys/bus/i2c/devices/0-002e/pwm1 echo 255 > /sys/bus/i2c/devices/0-002e/pwm2
There's currently no script to regulate the fan automatically, so I suggest you run the fan at full speed.
Beeper
You can install the beep package and then user the beeper in the
following way:
beep -e /dev/input/event0 -f 220 -l 500 -d 500 -r 3