Rich's Tongfamily (Richtong.net add-on)

_More on the delayed write problem from Erik who is struglling like me to get the thing to work_
I bugged tech support at Linksys and they suggested turning off write caching on the local disc of the machine doing the writing to the NSLU2, disable all software firewalls, and if that doesnt work try replacing ethernet and USB cables. None of those seem like great suggestions, but I intend to try them anyway next chance I get. And failing that Ill see if I cant isolate the problem to the USB enclosure.

Here’s how to debug this problem….
# On my USB enclosure, it is a problem with the USB enclosure itself. I figured this out by plugging the drive into a Windows machine and then doing a massive copy of 100GBs, the thing failed with a delay write at the same time the NSLU2 did. So it is not the NSLU2, it is the USB enclosure.
# Groveling around the various websites reveals that depending on what chipset is used in the enclosure, it can be more or less robust. I have found that if you don’t push my enclosure too hard (e.g., really jam the amount of data), it performs kind of OK. On Windows, you can turn off the delayed writing and other caching which seems to slow things down enough for the enclosure to handle it. Obviously you can’t do this with the Linksys.
# There doesn’t seem to be much consensus on which enclosures work that I have found. I bought an elcheapo one
# Net, net, stick the USB drive on a Windows machine or a Mac that has more error diagnostics, run the thing hard and see if it still crashes. If it does, it is time to do the enclosure dance to figure out which one is really compatible with the NSLU2.