Update on Pogoplug

After complaining loudly on their support page, I've got an excellent reply from Pogoplug:

Hi.

I spoke with our dev group and here's what's going on. They are working on a LAN discovery broadcast for the drive software, so that it will work without internet access. It should be available soon, and I'll update you when it's ready. We did not provide SMB/CIFS support because we wanted a consistent user experience for Mac and Windows, both in and out of the home. The protocol used by Pogoplug drive software is also a lot faster than SMB. Having said that, you can get full access to your Pogoplug and add any software that you want. We are just about to publish this on our site, but here's the info you'll need:

Pogoplug runs with Linux 2.6.22.18. and the full open source for the kernel, glibc, busybox, u-boot, and other user-mode processes will be available linked from our developer section. Pogoplug currently accepts SSH sessions for the root user (un: root, pw: ceadmin). The processor is a ARM processor with all firmware stored on the internal NAND flash device. The standard linux MTD device drive is used to manage this NAND device with JFFS2 filesystem. Once you SSH to the device, you can change the root file system, install a new kernel modules, etc.

We also support a 3.3v RS-232 UART connection on the main logic board. This UART connection gives low level access to the u-boot boot loader which allows for upgrading the main kernel image.

Please let me know if I can provide any additional information.

Thanks,

I haven't set up the cross compiler on my linux box yet, so haven't done any serious attempt of adding more functionality to it. But regardless, given this information, you definitely want to block ssh/telnet port at the firewall if you haven't done so already, and you shouldn't hook it up to the network you don't trust.

My brief performance testing (just copying some big file) seems to suggest that it is not particularly slower or faster. One issue I've encountered was BSOD - I tried playing .mkv from a windows box that has pogoplug software installed (hence the pogoplug shows up as a disk), and I've got BSOD (the first time in a few years since I've got that laptop). On the second attempt, it didn't crash, so it's not a definite evidence of a bug in their software, but nonetheless not a great sign.

So, it's still not useable as my main network storage. But there are some good signs that it may become one.