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Models covered
DNS-323

• DNS-323 rev. B1

• DNS-323 rev. C1

Overall Status

Legend :
= OK ; Unsupported(No Driver) ; = Error (Couldn't get it working); [?] Unknown, Not Test ; [-] Not-applicable
= Configuration Required; = Only works with a non-free driver and or firmware

Installation

The D-Link DNS-323 is an ARM-based device and the armel architecture is fully supported by Debian.

Debian can be flashed to replace the original firmware on DNS-323 devices, by installing a "firmware upgrade" which in reality contains the Debian installer. When you restart your device, Debian installer starts and allows you to login via SSH to perform the installation. Debian will be installed to your SATA disk, the original firmware in flash will be replaced with Debian, and your disk will be erased.

Since Debian is installed on disk, your machine will not boot without the disk. Debian does not install a web interface to configure your machine, although it's possible to install such software (for example, Ajenti.

The D-Link DNS-323 doesn't have a recovery mechanism that would allow you to load a firmware image via the network. If something goes wrong, you'll have to connect a serial console to access the recovery mechanism. Please proceed only if you want to replace your firmware with Debian and if you can make a serial console for your device in case there are problems.

Requirements and Preparation

In order to install Debian, you need the following:

• A D-Link DNS-323 (revision A1, B1 or C1)
• An internal SATA disk in the device.
• A network connection.
• Another machine on which you have an SSH client. SSH is included in every Linux distribution as OpenSSH and there is PuTTY for Windows.
• While a serial console is not required for the installation, you have to be able to make one in case something goes wrong during the installation or later during the operation of Debian.

Making a Backup

You have to make a backup of all the data stored on your D-Link device before starting with the installation of Debian since the whole disk will be formatted during the installation.

Starting the Installer

1. Check in the original firmware that your network settings are correct. The Debian installer will use the same settings as your original firmware, so please choose either DHCP or configure a valid IP address, gateway and DNS.

2. Download the installer image to your PC - A netboot image for Wheezy is available from the Debian archive.

3. Access the admin interface of your device with your web browser in order to install the firmware image (netboot.img) containing the Debian installer.
4. Log in as user admin (the default password is empty), go to Tools and choose Firmware.
5. Hit the Browse button and select the installer image you downloaded before (look for netboot.img).
6. Press Apply and the Debian installer will be written to flash.
7. When the firmware update has completed, restart your device.

After you have flashed the Debian installer image and restarted your device, the Debian installer will start. Since the DNS-323 doesn't have any display, SSH net work access will be used for the installation. The installer will bring up the network, start the OpenSSH server and you can then connect to the device using SSH. You have to wait a few minutes after starting the system before you can connect. Only then will you be able to connect to the Debian installer. The installer currently doesn't use the LED to signal when it's ready.

== Connecting to the Debian net installer ==

Since the DNS-323 doesn't have a display, the installer cannot tell you which IP address to connect to or which password to use.

• If your original firmware is configured to use DHCP (the default configuration from D-Link), the Debian installer will try to acquire an IP address with DHCP. You can use the MAC address listed at the bottom of your device to tell your DHCP server to give out a specific IP address to your machine.
• If you configured a static address in your original firmware, this configuration will be used. However, if your network configuration was incomplete (e.g. IP address or DNS were missing), the installer will use DHCP instead.
• If DHCP is used but your DHCP server does not respond, the installer will use the fallback address 192.168.0.32. This is the default IP address used by the D-Link firmware. If you are unsure what the address of your device is, unplug the Ethernet cable, start the machine again, wait until Debian installer is ready for SSH and then plug the cable back in and connect to this fallback address.

Please make sure that your device is on a local network to which only you have access since the installer uses a very generic password,

Connect to the installer (again, replacing the address in the example with the actual IP address of your device):

ssh installer@192.168.1.100

The default username and password for the installer are installer and install respectively.

Important note: When you connect to the installer, one of the first screens will allow you to select additional installer modules. Make sure to select the ext3 module. If you don't select the ext3 module, the installer will not work correctly due to Bug #729445.

The installation itself should be pretty standard and you can follow the installation guide. The installer knows about the DNS-323 and at the end of the installation it will flash a kernel and ramdisk that will automatically boot into Debian.

Since your device boots from flash you don't have many limitations as to how you partition your hard drive. You can use LVM and RAID and a number of filesystems.

At the end of the installation, the installer will write the new kernel to flash. Afterwards you will get a confirmation that the installation is complete.

Confirm, wait for the installer to finish and once your SSH session terminates, wait a few minutes before you can connect to your newly installed system via SSH. You will be able to log in as root or your newly created user.

You should now have a complete Debian system running on your DNS-323. You can use apt-get and other tools to install additional software.

Recovery

B1 revision board

C1 revision board

• TODO: sanitize from:

  • http://forum.dsmg600.info/viewtopic.php?pid=35122#p35122

Important Note

Configuration

Display

This device is headless, as such it can only be managed using a web interface once it's booted, or via a serial console.

A serial port must be added by soldering a cable to the board.

Power Management

WiFi

System Summary

lspci

lspci -nn

lsusb

lsusb -v | grep -E '\<(Bus|iProduct|bDeviceClass|bDeviceProtocol)' 2>/dev/null

Resources

Attachments

Some configuration files and sample outputs.

Useful Links

* Debian Bug #617219 (solved) - Debian installer didn't work with C1-series DNS-323 * Installing Debian on the DNS-323 * DNS-323 firmware archive including version 1.00 to 1.09 (U.S. site) * Changelog for firmware versions 1.00 to 1.09 * DNS-323 recovery * Debian on the DNS-323

Credits

CategoryDebianOn CategoryDebianOn