NSLU2 Firmware upgrade tools

Tools that run under Windows:

Other Manufacturer tool

This is a menu-driven Windows tool. It detects multiple network adapters and offers a choice. Select the one the slug is attached to. When it detects the slug it will probably display it's original name (as printed on the base) and not the name you may have set in the configuration screen.

It is strange to have a non-Linksys tool, but devices with almost the exact same PCB were sold in alternative cases. The one I have is in a white housing that lies flat on a surface instead of standing up. I no longer have the original firmware as it has long since been overwritten, so it now has Linksys firmware.

As far as I'm aware the Other Manufacturer (The name has been removed as I have no information about newer appliances from that manufacturer and don't want to waste people's time) upgrade tool will never overwrite the boot-loader so if an upgrade fails you simply put the slug back into upgrade mode and try again.

As of January 2007 the tool appears to have been removed from the website. Hopefully someone will build one of the Linux tools to run under Windows.

Tools that run under Linux:

Upslug

The first Linux based upgrade tool. I have not tried this.

Upslug2

The second Linux based upgrade tool. Like the Windows tool this one will not overwrite the boot-loader unless compiled with special options set. Upslug2 does not use code from Upslug. You are most likely to receive this as a source "tarball" file. It's not hard to compile it under a typical PC Linux, and you can run the resulting binary file in place, it does not need installing. It does need to be run as ROOT though, so I use sudo to run it.

If you have two slugs you can even run Upslug2 on one slug and use it to flash the other.

Permanent bricking

I do not know of a tool able to damage the boot-loader. I recall seeing warnings about this though. The only projects I read about that involved a full overwrite used a direct connection to the PCB, probably JTAG, to bypass everything and write the flash directly. As far as I know the only reason for doing this would be if you were hacking the PCB to have more memory, which was just about possible and the modification was nicknamed the "Fat Slug".