Network Attached

So I've successfully downloaded Mandriva 2007 Beta, but before I burn it, I need to put all my DVD images in a safe place.

Yesterday an Asus WL HDD arrived from Scan. Perfect.

The Asus WL HDD is basically a hard drive (notebook size) with one wired and one wireless connection. My plan is to stick it somewhere, have it join my wireless network, and provide it's storage to any machine that's switched on.

Configuration was supposed to be striaght forward, and I suppose it would have been if the WL HDD was your Access Point (the bit of kit to which other wirless thing connect) rather than a client, connecting to an existing Access Point.

It took me ages to find where to enter client settings (add the SSID - wireless network name - to the "Client" page, then highlight it, and click "edit" to give another page for security settings and the like), and when I did, there were no options for "WPA", only "WEP".

"WPA" & "WEP" are different security methods for wireless networks. Many very clever people have discussed the merits of both, and while neither are perfect, "WPA" is considered less imperfect than "WEP". So my wireless network uses "WPA" security, and my new bit of kit doesn't speak that language.

I actually considered changing everything to "WEP", for a while, but then decided on a much more radical solution.

One of the reasons I decided on the WL HDD for my network attached storage was that it is based on the same Broadcom chip as the marvellous Linksys WRT54g(s). I have two of these little blue wonders scattered about the house. The chip in these devices is capable of running a "proper" operating system, Linux of course, and thus makes these boxes a lot more useful.

So rather than fight with a machine that doesn't do what I want it to do, I'm going to turn it in to much more than it was with a firmware flash.

There are many "custom" firmwares for these Broadcom based machines, of which I've used DD-WRT, which was a great introduction - easy, just works - and OpenWRT which is a lot more flexible, but requires more work.

For this purpose, OpenWRT is the best bet, so with the help of these tutorials and the documentation from OpenWRT, I'm going in.

My safety net is a "recovery" utility from Asus included with the WL HDD, which I've already used as the firmware update I did (looking for the elusive client settings) didn't take properly.

I'm not quite daft enough to attempt this before work, it's probably a job for a couple of hours at the weekend, so on hold for a day or two!