This is a quick review of Pogoplug. I have preordered the box, and it has finally arrived. Unfortunately, I'm deeply disappointed, because it has so much potential that's being wasted.
Pogoplug is essentially a small embedded computer, with Marvell's low-power ARM processor core with some DRAM and flash memory, one ethernet port and one USB port.
I pre-ordered it, figuring there's not much to lose - I figured this would be a perfect device that I can play with, as a small home server, given that this little box was supposed to run linux.
Now that I've received the box, it has a few critical flaws that make it not very usable in its current state.
- No power saving mode for the disk - I've been using an old laptop running Windows XP as a file/print server. Naturally, when I don't use the disk, the disk doesn't do any "seeks", and it's configured so that it spins down the hard disk fairly quickly when idle. This means my external hard disk spends most of its time spinned down, not consuming much power. This is in great contrast to Pogoplug - it constantly spins the disk, and even when I'm not using it, it does bunch of seeks, consuming power and wearing down the disk. For a box that's meant to be on all the time, this is...deeply disappointing, to say it politely.
- No CIFS/SMB support nor NFS - I don't know what Pogoplug people are thinking, but they didn't enable this, and there's no way to "properly" access the files, except...
- A priorietary software on Windows and Mac that show the drive hooked to Pogoplug as a network disk. This software, confusingly also called Pogoplug, doesn't connect if your machine and your pogoplug can't talk to pogoplug's server. For example, if you lose your connection to your ISP, you can't connect to your disk hooked to Pogoplug. This means...
- Total dependence on the proprietary webservice - as is, the box is useless without pogoplug website. If the company folds, the box will essentially become a deadweight.
- No printer server support - given how easy it is to support print server, it's crazy not to support this.
- No ssh into the box - even though this is my computer, I don't have root access. It's not like the box doesn't have sshd running - it has the port open (crazily, it has the telnetd running on port 22 as well - whoever left telnetd running by default needs some serious education on the network security).
As you can see, all the flaws are software - the hardware itself is compact, silent, and low power, and just the right form factor and the price. It's just the software that's not allowing the little-box-that-can from doing all things it's meant to do.
And scanning through the pogoplug support forum and reading some responses, I don't see enough good signs that the company is willing to listen to the similar requests that's already made on the board.
3 comments:
I got mine yesterday, and I haven't used it much yet, but I mostly share your concerns, but I'm not as dismissive of what Pogoplug is trying to provide.
You and I aren't their target audience. Mom and Grandma are. They have made it easy (and secure) for non-technical people to put their hard-drives on the internet. The fact that the hardware is awesome and full of potential for us nerds is just a side-effect.
You may argue that 'us nerds' will make up the biggest part of their market, but I think they are hoping to crack the bigger non-technical market. Time will tell.
In the meantime, they have been pretty open about allowing hacking. I am hopeful that in the next few days that they'll post some of the critical developer documentation that they've been promising, but overall the messages on their forum are encouraging. It sounds like they have every intention of allowing developers to hack and modify the Pogoplug. Again, we'll see, but I'm hopeful.
Now, to your points:
1) agreed, they need to fix this; there is a comment on their forum that makes it sound like this is a priority for them.
2) I think this will be easy to enable for 'us nerds' once they tell us what the root password is on the device.
3) I think that the proprietary software is meant to provide some degree of ease-of-use for non-technical users. I haven't downloaded their windows software to see how this works, so I don't have much of an opinion. For power users ('us nerds', again), we should be able to ssh in and install samba and nfs and do whatever we want.
4) I don't think this is true. I think if their service folds, you can just use their proprietary software to access the device on your LAN; you would of course lose the 'internet sharing' capability, but I'm sure some open-source software will appear shortly to allow alternate means of accessing Pogoplugs. I mean, it is just a linux server, and there are lots of solutions for this problem already.
5) Yep, this would be another good feature, but I'm guessing that they are reluctant to add it ... who wants the headache of supporting 3000 printers for random, non-technical Pogoplug users? I think if they can figure out a way to minimize the support burden, they'll consider it.
6) I agree that leaving telnet available is unwise, I would encourage them to address that ASAP.
Thanks for the blog posting, you come up pretty high on a Google search for "pogoplug ssh".
- deadlycheese
Mostly I agree with you - just that my "review" is strictly from my point of view. At the same time as I flared up in my blog, I asked a bunch of emails to Pogoplug folks, and I've got some good replies. I've also tried using pogoplug a bit more (e.g. streaming video files) and found some more things to complain about :)
I'll update my blog soon with these new developments...
By the way, I was able to telnet in now that I know the root password (I emailed support and they responded with it), I have been able to poke around on the device a bit.
It appears to support up to 1GB of RAM, but the my Pogoplug only has 256MB installed. Also, I have determined that there is 512MB of flash memory installed (of which 500MB appears to be available).
To see the extra flash disk space, I telnetted in as root, and did the following:
mkdir /tmp/mnt/block3
mount /dev/mtdblock3 /tmp/mnt/block3
df
That will mount the remaining flash storage and show you the size.
FYI.
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