PlayControl Software

Last time, we got JFFS and a USB drive working on the DD-WRT router. Now I want to put it to use. 

The first thing I want is Zeroconf. While all my OS X readers are very familiar with the technology and understand its powerful implications, there are still many circles outside that don't. 

So for those who aren't familiar with it, Zeroconf (Zero-Configuration Networking) is an open standard to make IP-based network devices trivially easy to plug in and configure. A typical comparison is a USB device. With your USB device, you plug it in, and don't have to worry about typing in IP addresses, subnet masks, etc. There is no good reason IP based devices can't do this, and Zeroconf finally fills in that hole.

Disclaimer: I am documenting what I did myself. There may be errors or omissions. The process is long, complicated, and convoluted. I am not responsible for any loss of data or damage that may occur if you try this yourself. You have been warned.

As I mentioned in the previous part, the three biggest distros seem to be OpenWRT, DD-WRT, and Tomato.

OpenWRT seems to be the most modular and customizable. But I would also say it is the least user friendly from my attempts to figure it out. It is so modular that a web-gui doesn't even come with it by default and many of the OpenWRT people seem comfortable hacking away at the terminal. I really didn't want to go this route (though you will see that I end up doing a considerable amount of terminal hacking myself despite my hopes to avoid it). …