Gnubee Install Guide

The GnuBee is an open source crowd funded nas system. It requires a fair bit of configuration to use and I found that the docs on the website to be fairly inadequet for setting up a working system so after a lot of messing around I have come up with a guide to get to a fully working debian system quickly.

What you need

Steps:

Download the latest copy of the gnubee firmware from http://neil.brown.name/gnubee/. Neil brown’s version is more up to date than the version from the gnubee website. You can install the firmware by copying the file to a usb and renaming it GNUBEE.BIN

Now turn the gnu bee on and you will see the lights begin to flash. When they stop flashing the firmware install has finished. Turn off the gnu bee and remove the usb

Insert a blank sd card in to the gnu bee. This will be used to install the OS on to and will be formatted.

Now connect the USB UART cable to your pc and gnu bee. This cable will provide a connection for you to enter commands and debug the system until SSH can be configured.

On your computer run screen /dev/ttyUSB0 57600 (You may need to install gnu screen first) and now turn on the gnu bee

You will see a boot log and then a busybox shell. From here you can initiate the debian install. Run config and the guided install will begin.

The steps to install are as follows:

You will get a message telling you to reboot. The install is now finished and you can log in using the username: root and the password: GnuBee You should change the password to something secure. From this point on its the same as configuring any debian system which there is pleny of info online available.