http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS9634061300.html

This looks promising: a $100 ($50 in volume) 5 Watt computer.
1.2GHz CPU, 512MB each of RAM and Flash
Marvell 88F6281 "Kirkwood" SoC
gigabit Ethernet and USB 2.0 ports

Looks like the SoC also has a 2nd Ethernet port, 2 SATA parts,
PCIe and other stuff that isn't brought out for some reason.
http://linuxdevices.com/files/misc/marvell_88F6000_diagram.gif

Anyone have an idea how much work it would take to get
BSD running on this thing?  Get the 2nd Ethernet working
and have a 5 Watt firewall for personal and SOHO use.
(Obviously you aren't going to run a Fortune-500 company
through this thing.)  Or use it as a USB device server.
Bring the SATA ports out and make a small NAS.  And so on.
Unfortunately I don't see firewire listed. :-(

[ message continues ]

What would be firewire good for?

Regards,
David

[ message continues ]

Data transfer such as for full backups or cloning or audio/video.
Haven't tested it yet on OpenBSD, I still have USB-only / ethernet-base
storage for those systems.  Subjectively, I find FW to be much faster
than USB2 on my hardware using OS X and Ubuntu.

Notes from published comparisons below.  YMMV:

	"Although the USB 2.0 is speedier than the FireWire, the
	latter beats it when used in high-speed storage devices. "
 http://ixbtlabs.com/articles/usb20vsfirewire/


 	"Read Test:
	 5000 files (300 MB total) FireWire was 33% faster than USB 2.0
	160 files (650MB total) FireWire was 70% faster than USB 2.0
  	Write Test:
	 5000 files (300 MB total) FireWire was 16% faster than USB 2.0
	 160 files (650MB total) FireWire was 48% faster than USB 2.0
 http://www.cwol.com/firewire/firewire-vs-usb.htm



	Tests	USB2	FW	% faster than USB 2.0
	Test 1 (read)	6.12	8.14	32.99
	Test 2 (read)	6.39	10.89	70.51
	Test 1 (write)	5.11	5.92	15.85
	Test 2 (write)	5.76	8.50	47.59
http://g4tv.com/techtvvault/features/39129/USB-20-Versus-FireWire_pg3.html


	"Our benchmarks show Firewire 800 is up to 46% faster
	than a drive connected to the more common Firewire 400,
	and about 29% faster than USB 2.0. "
 http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2602&p=15

regards,
-Lars

[ message continues ]

1) Firewire controller in your machine is a realiable path to have it 
cracked/crashed at any time (on most of the platforms).
2) Firewire is not supported on OpenBSD.

Regards,
David

[ message continues ]

Sources please, regarding cracking.


That would be a hinderance to testing ;)

Regards,
-Lars

[ message continues ]

With firewire OHCI controller you have you physical RAM open. There is a 
brief summary here:

Perhaps. In case of firewire it depends on proper design of a connected 
device too, but I meant stability of your machine/OS. A device connected 
over firewire can do anything it wants with your machine, even crash it 
unintentionally if there is a bug in the device (quite likely).

Regards,
David

[ message continues ]

Hi!


Disconnecting (or accidentally having disconnected) an USB
harddisk/stick without unmounting it isn't exactly fun either.
At least last time I "tried" it.

Kind regards,

Hannah.

[ message continues ]

Well, I thought that ddb> because of suddenly unplugged USB device or 
because of its timeout is due to my dated OpenBSD installation.

Anyway, I would never trade this risk for possible silent memory 
corruption because of firewire.

Regards,
David

[ message continues ]

Hi!


For me it just works (external USB2 hard disk).

Kind regards,

Hannah.

[ message continues ]

And you are aware of how insecure firewire is, I hope? With physical
access admittedly but it does DMA transfers without talking to the OS
etc.

See http://www.ruxcon.org.au/files/2006/firewire_attacks.pdf
I saw the demo and heard the talk that is not on the slides .... Scary!


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Rod/
/earth: write failed, file system is full
cp: /earth/creatures: No space left on device

[ message continues ]

It appears that could be turned off, but I doubt any hardware makers

Thanks.  Interesting presentation.  There's a lot out there. e.g.:

http://www.darkreading.com/security/vulnerabilities/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=211201211
http://blogs.23.nu/RedTeam/0000/00/antville-5201/

Again, it looks like it *might* be possible to fix problem at the driver
level by having DMA turned off by default or disabled:

	"Because FireWire and USB were designed with the
	intention of connecting high-speed disk drives, both
	specifications have provisions for DMA. This means that,
	under many circumstances, a device that's plugged into a
	FireWire or USB interface has the ability to read and
	write to individual physical memory locations inside a
	the host computer. Such access necessarily bypasses the
	host operating system and any security checks that it
	might wish to implement."

 http://www.csoonline.com/article/220868/Attack_of_the_iPods_?page=2

What would be fine to avoid would be the marketing of shortcomings in
IEEE hardware and drivers leveraged to push DRM'd hardware like the
"hanging chads" were used to usher in blackbox voting.  The last Dell
notebook I looked at had TCPM in the hardware and the Apples seem to now
have HDCP:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2008/11/apple-brings-hdcp-to-a-new-aluminum-macbook-...

Regards
-Lars

[ message continues ]

On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 11:26 AM, Lars Noodin <larsnooden@openoffice.org>

FireWire is not supported on OpenBSD.

[ message continues ]