Making a (More or Less) Functional Linux PC from a Buffalo LS-WX2.0TL/R1

I recently bought a new NAS drive, so I decided to play around a bit with my good ol' Linkstation.

Recently, I bought a WD MyCloud. Thus, I didn't actually have a use for my old Buffalo Linkstation anymore.

So, I decided to play around a bit - and make at least Python scripts run on it.

To do so, I first followed the followed the guide most noteworthy guide on the NAS-Central wiki. After enabling Telnet and SSH, I now had to find out which installer was fit - indeed, most of the common Linux installers (as Linux is run on the machine by default) are not installed) are not installed themselves. But IPKG is.

IPKG offers a download for Python 3, which I am using usually. To get there, the download list had to be updated first. Thus, what was to type was the following

ipkg update
ipkg install python3

Now Python 3.2.3 is installed. As it is noted in the registry as Python3, you put in the command "Python3" to enter the Python shell, and accordingly, Python3 -filename- to run a specified script. Unfortunately, I have not yet found a proper way to install any further install mechanisms besides make, which is also available via IPKG.

Anyway, another funny feature I found was the possibility to tamper with the web interface of the Linkstation. You can see where that ended in in the screenshot linked (thanks to wikimedia for the Unicorn by the way).

To do so, you use the command line to enter the directory /www/cgi-bin/html/en/style (command: cd /www/cgi-bin/html/en/style) and then use the pre-installed text editor vi to edit the CSS file used for the web interface.

So, once your working directory is /www/cgi-bin/html/en/style, you enter vi style240.css and edit it in whatever way you want. Good thing, that your browser will recognize all fonts installed on your machine - even if I put MS Comic Sans as the default font until I became too lazy to copy-paste it. Aside from that, you can re-design pretty much your whole web interface from there - and if there is anything you want to reorganize, the files are to be found along the folder path, even if I have not yet had the time to look into the CGI files.