I was wondering if it might be possible to create a P2P backup for FR based on a bunch of these little Pi’s. With some custom software running on them all you would need is a 35.00 Pi plugged into the cable modem/DSL modem of several freepers. Power use is 3 watts or so and an old cell phone charger provides the power. Storage is on a cheap SD card.
Newegg has been selling 32GB SD cards for 18 dollars including shipping. 4GB is enough and those are pretty much throw-away items now.
A network of these things could ensure a P2P system would never go down. I’m an embedded systems guy, wish I knew enough about this type of software to create it myself. Don’t have the time to start from scratch.
If you can get a Eucalyptus cloud set up with those things, then it should be doable without custom coding, since the cloud creates an instance that functions as a single machine. So, you should be able to just set up that instance like a single Linux server. The tricky part would be adding that cloud to JR’s load balancing set up.
Actually, looking into it a bit more, Eucalyptus might be too memory-intensive for these things. But, it looks like someone has already figured out how to setup up MySql Cluster on the things, so that might be a step in the right direction:
http://www.clusterdb.com/mysql-cluster/mysql-cluster-running-on-raspberry-pi/
A commenter there also tells how to increase the available RAM by unallocating the memory to the video chip.
That would be an awesome idea. Maybe something we can keep prying government eyes out of?