My New Linux Box - A Saga

It is 4 inches x 2 inches x 2.5 inches and has 0.5 GB of ram and 0.5GB of flash ram, draws 5W and is now setup and working. I bought a Tonidoplug and it arrived today. Setting it up wasn't quite so smooth as once it's plugged into a network and I went to connect to it, I discovered that I needed the Mac address. This is the unique network ID and is printed on a label on the casing, on the side where you plug it in to the power socket! So I unplugged it, got the Mac address and entered all the details into a text file just in case for future reference.

Once I found the box in a web page, efforts to connect to it kept timing out. I went to my ADSL router admin page as that it where network devices can be configured and found a login prompt; something I'd never seen before and I'd been there lots. Poking around the web I discovered my ISP who had supplied the router had found a security flaw and had remotely set a new password in every box (to the router's serial number), also printed on the case! Nice of them to tell me (not!)

So I dived under the desk, got the serial number and got logged in, I discovered that the IP address of my Tonidoplug was not what the setup webpage had reported (bug!). My router network admin pages showed all attached network devices and armed with the correct IP address and the password on the leaflet I finally logged into the box. After all that I had done to get here I actually felt I'd achieved something major!

This kind of thing is not uncommon with network devices and a bit of getting to know your network can make life much easier. Write down everything, all the config and login details, IP addresses, passwords etc and put it somewhere you can find it. I've not even got into programming the Tonidoplug in C++, so more on that to come!