Running Linux on a flash drive

Andy Green fedora at warmcat.com
Mon Aug 30 19:13:30 UTC 2004


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On Monday 30 August 2004 20:01, Mike Westkamper wrote:
> I am working on making Linux (FC2) run on a flash disk.

Cool project... but you will need a 512MB minimum I would think.

> To avoid the write-cycle limits on the flash it must be configured without
> a swap drive and remove any extraneous logging. I have eliminated the swap
> partition, however I am not sure what logs are created and how to eliminate
> them or direct them to /dev/nul. The objective is not to beat the flash to
> death since there is a 1 million write cycle limit.

The one way I know would work is to create a small ramdisk during init and use 
mount --bind to mount it over /var/log

> I am also trying to make the kernel static, w/o modules, to keep the speed
> up as the flash is slow. Here my attempts have been less that acceptable. I
> constantly get errors on the build and can't seem to eliminate all the
> modules.

Are you sure that loading a few modules is going to make the slightest bit of 
noticeable difference?

> Finally, to use some sort of sleep mode to avoid the re-boot delay on the
> re-application of power. Once developed the system will not ever see any
> different configuration. Here I can't find much information on how to do
> this.

ACPI handles this on modern systems, but it is really cranky about which BIOS 
you have.

> Any pointers on any of these subjects will be greatly appreciated. If not
> already done, I will gladly post a HOW-TO when done.

- -Andy

- -- 
Automatic actions for USB cameras, cardreaders, memory sticks, MP3 players
http://warmcat.com/usbautocam
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