GuruPlug is a compact and low power

plug computer A plug computer is an external device, often configured for use in the home or office as a compact computer. The name is derived from the small configuration of such devices; they are often enclosed in an AC power plug or AC adapter. Descri ...

running

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...

. It is intended to be a device that could act as a

web server A web server is computer software and underlying hardware that accepts requests via HTTP (the network protocol created to distribute web content) or its secure variant HTTPS. A user agent, commonly a web browser or web crawler, initi ...

, a

print server In computer networking, a print server, or printer server, is a type of server that connects printers to client computers over a network. It accepts print jobs from the computers and sends the jobs to the appropriate printers, queuing the jobs l ...

or any other

network service In computer networking, a network service is an application running at the network application layer and above, that provides data storage, manipulation, presentation, communication or other capability which is often implemented using a client� ...

. It has local storage in

NAND Flash Flash memory is an electronic non-volatile computer memory storage medium that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. The two main types of flash memory, NOR flash and NAND flash, are named for the NOR and NAND logic gates. Both us ...

, but also offers

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply ( interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broa ...

ports and a

Serial ATA SATA (Serial AT Attachment) is a computer bus interface that connects host bus adapters to mass storage devices such as hard disk drives, optical drives, and solid-state drives. Serial ATA succeeded the earlier Parallel ATA (PATA) standar ...

port to connect

external hard disk A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magnet ...

s.GuruPlug Server Palm-sized Server
/ref> The first versions of the GuruPlug Plus had no moving parts such as fans. Combined with the low power

ARM architecture ARM (stylised in lowercase as arm, formerly an acronym for Advanced RISC Machines and originally Acorn RISC Machine) is a family of reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architectures for computer processors, configure ...

CPU A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, an ...

, this results in both

power consumption Electric energy consumption is the form of energy consumption that uses electrical energy. Electric energy consumption is the actual energy demand made on existing electricity supply for transportation, residential, industrial, commercial, and ot ...

and noise level being typically lower compared to desktop PCs. However, these units had significant heating issues and were prone to overheating (the lack of a temperature sensor could form a safety issue when the unit is left running for multiple days).Forum entry in the GuruPlug forum
.http://1wt.eu/articles/guruplug-slow-heater/
Newer versions of the GuruPlug Plus manage the overheating problem by adding a 2-cm fan to the design, although this eliminates the benefit of the silent design.Forum entry in the GuruPlug forum
. The fan is not software-controllableOskar Andreasson's blog post discussing fan wiring
/ref> and makes a sound resembling that of a hair dryer. The standard version of GuruPlug still has no fan and thus produces no noise. In the area of small and low-power computing,

SheevaPlug The SheevaPlug is a "plug computer" designed to allow standard computing features in as small a space as possible. As one of the first such computers on the market, the device has a 1.2 GHz Marvell Kirkwood 6281 ARM-compatible CPU, a.k.a. ...

was its predecessor.

Variants and modifications

The GuruPlug comes in three variants: GuruPlug Server Standard, GuruPlug Server Plus and GuruPlug Display. The Plus version features a second

Gigabit Ethernet In computer networking, Gigabit Ethernet (GbE or 1 GigE) is the term applied to transmitting Ethernet frames at a rate of a gigabit per second. The most popular variant, 1000BASE-T, is defined by the IEEE 802.3ab standard. It came into use i ...

, an

eSATA SATA (Serial AT Attachment) is a computer bus interface that connects host bus adapters to mass storage devices such as hard disk drives, optical drives, and solid-state drives. Serial ATA succeeded the earlier Parallel ATA (PATA) standard to ...

and

MicroSD Secure Digital, officially abbreviated as SD, is a proprietary non-volatile flash memory card format developed by the SD Association (SDA) for use in portable devices. The standard was introduced in August 1999 by joint efforts between San ...

Slot. The Display version features an

HDMI High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) is a proprietary audio/video interface for transmitting uncompressed video data and compressed or uncompressed digital audio data from an HDMI-compliant source device, such as a display controll ...

display port.

References

External links

PlugComputer Community

GuruPlug WikiInternal photos and performance tests
{{DEFAULTSORT:Guruplug Linux-based devices Computer storage devices Computer-related introductions in 2010