December 24, 2009 5:35 AM

Openpogo does not affect the Pogoplug functionality. The openpogo base setup provides the tools to add features using precompiled packages.

December 24, 2009 9:27 AM

Regarding the OpenPogo project, we unfortunately do not offer support for this software package. Note the founder of OpenPogo offers this legal caveat at http://www.openpogo.com/wiki/index.php5?title=OpenPogo:About

"OpenPogo.com (OpenPogo) and Mike Staszel, the service's administrator, are in no way affiliated with Cloud Engines, Inc., Pogoplug, or any other entity. OpenPogo is a third-party website."

As such, we at Cloud Engines only provide support for Pogoplug's core feature set and honor the original hardware Warranty for your Pogoplug. Please take a look at our Warranty policy if you haven't already: http://www.pogoplug.com/warranty.html

December 24, 2009 10:41 AM

I don't think he's discouraging the use of OpenPogo. OpenPogo is not affiliated with Cloud Engine as he said, and therefore they can't give tech support for it. That's all he's saying...no subtext.

December 25, 2009 12:47 PM

Guess it's time for a reply from the developer of OpenPogo eh? Forgive me if I make this too technical or not technical enough, but this is in essence what has been happening over the past few months:

So I bought a Pogoplug way back in April and patiently waited until it arrived in May. In that time I found out that it had SSH and telnet and learned about it's software platform. It's powered by a tiny Linux kernel modified by Brad dietrich, CTO at CloudEngines. It's so small that filesystem drivers are manually loaded as modules by the "hbplug" service (just to give you an example of what I'm dealing with). Interestingly, minimal printer modules are built-in to the kernel but there are no plans to include printer support.

So I got my Pogoplug and started looking at a couple of options, mainly Debian and Fedora software. I shamelessly extracted a couple of Fedora packages using the built-in BusyBox "rpm" command...but guess what, I bricked my Pogoplug. Turns out that "glibc" on the Pogoplug is waaaaay too old for newer programs. OK, great.

So why not try replacing glibc? Well, replacing glibc basically kills the Pogoplug as well. Busybox needs the older version of glibc as do the other Pogoplug programs. So I left the Pogoplug's software alone for awhile and basically called it quits.

Then out of pure luck, I found Seongbae's blog where he gave links to NSLU2 software that is meant to be used on old routers and the like. All of the packages are meant to be installed in /opt, meaning that they do not even touch the original files on the Pogoplug, save some modifications to the bootup that the OpenPogo Base package makes (to mount mtdblock3 to /opt so that you could have some space on the plug...CloudEngines made it so the space you have is 32MB but hid away ~450MB in mtdblock3, in my opinion, pointless and unnecessary, but that's another story.)

So it turned out that software for some obscure old router worked on the Pogoplug. Great. The only problem? It's built for an obscure old router 3 years ago. That's why it works with the Pogoplug...it's built for the older glibc! But hey, it worked. I mirrored all of the packages on OpenPogo.com and set it up as the repository. I glued together an installation package and guide so that others could enjoy my findings as well. I probably bricked my Pogoplug 3 times by now...

So I went on to install other packages from the repository and wrote long, tedious guides for them. The software was basic and implementation was so simple that there was no way you could possibly brick your Pogoplug. I have yet to hear of anyone saying "I have OpenPogo and my Pogoplug doesn't work." It has flaws, but those flaws live on the other partition and unless you go crazy and choose to mess around with the Pogoplug with things outside of the guides, you're OK.

But moving on...I have 1 Pogoplug. Just recently have IanJB and bvwelch joined me in developing more for the Pogoplug. The plan was to compile applications on the Pogoplug for speed and ease-of-use to make guides shorter. We were even going to quadruple our package offerings from 1000 packages to 4000 packages given time to make them all. the only problem? Well, packages today use newer glibc versions, not the old glibc on the Pogoplug. Having gained knowledge over the past few months, we were ready to start combatting this issue ourselves. We missed the Christmas deadline and have no new deadline set for ourselves because as far as we know, there is no way we can get around these limitations without voiding the Pogoplug's warranty completely by replacing the entire operating system.

I think the warranty issue never really got resolved. The Pogoplug is a consumer product made to do only one thing well: access files through the drive connector (the rest of its features are, honestly, lacking). I don't expect many updates to the Linux OS and don't think glibc will ever be updated along with the extremely old 2.6.22.18 kernel.

The warranty claim process looks much like this:
1. Costumer complains to me about Pogoplug functions not working, I sent him to Cloudengines support.
2. Customer tells Cloudengines that he has OpenPogo. Customer is pretty much then sent back to me.
3. Well, what do I do? Most of the problems at this stage are pretty simple and don't need CloudEngines help. It's usually a restart of the plug, router, or computer. Only once has someone actually bricked their plug by running 30+ PHP scripts that overheated the Pogoplug, but I don't know if he was running the OpenPogo version of php or not. CloudEngines replaced his Pogoplug, free.

The point? Consumers never know what they're gonna get when they run OpenPogo. I know not to expect much support in terms of, well, maybe getting a development Pogoplug or at least a blessing as mentioned above. And OpenPogo users now know that they're pretty much stuck with old packages because of the obscurity of a consumer product. And version 2, which I haven't even seen in person let alone tried to develop on, will probably run the same old software.

I don't blame anyone for this mess really. It's a consumer product that was never meant to run other applications. As mentioned by pretty much everyone I've personally talked to and above, OpenPogo is the reason why many, many people buy the Pogoplug. It's meant to be open for those who want to use its full potential. From Brad Feld, major investor in Cloudengines, to a couple of guys at Intel impressed by OpenPogo on the Pogoplug, it's apparent that OpenPogo does add actual business value to the Pogoplug, not just fun little hacks.

But for now, that's essentially just it. OpenPogo is a hack and CloudEngines wants it to remain a hack. There's not much anyone can do about it.

Here's where I get banned. If you were expecting openness and a platform to run newer applications on, you should go with a Sheevaplug. It's $99 and it runs today's applications, handmade by IanJB and I. We even went so far as to make a complete OS for it natively that allows for complete, unobstructed modifications. And if you brick it, it has an easy mini-USB port so you can reflash it.

It doesn't run the Pogoplug software, but it does run software from another plug manufacturer starting with a "T" that you might want to look at.

December 25, 2009 7:47 PM updated: December 26, 2009 7:55 AM

crimsonredmk said: Here's where I get banned. If you were expecting openness and a platform to run newer applications on, you should go with a Sheevaplug. It's $99 and it runs today's applications, handmade by IanJB and I. We even went so far as to make a complete OS for it natively that allows for complete, unobstructed modifications. And if you brick it, it has an easy mini-USB port so you can reflash it. It doesn't run the Pogoplug software, but it does run software from another plug manufacturer starting with a "T" that you might want to look at.

If you are thinking you will get banned from this site, for stating that, no worries. The whole idea of the forums is a place to talk freely about the PogoPlug.

Place Shifting Enthusiasts

October 8, 2010 3:43 PM

Some clarification needed since I am an NSLU2 user and also Pogoplug and Dockstar user. The NSLU2 was not a router but a diskless mini NAS by Linksys that was a predecessor to the Plug Computers. It has a very extensive user community at nslu2-linux.org that supports optware (unslung, openslug), debian, and openwrt among other platforms. The unslung/optware packages allowed usage of the original and additional functionality of the NAS. Openpogo is basically a repackaging of the optware package by making an easier installation of the ipkg installer of optware. There are actually some fairly new packages in the optware repository which is compiled for various platforms. Through this repository, I have been able to install Asterisk 1.6 and the FreePBX 2.8 on a stock Pogoplug which still has my.pogoplug.com functionality and everything works well.