[gentoo-user] Re: CF and Gentoo

[James <wireless@tampabay.rr.com>]

Neil Bothwick <neil <at> digimed.co.uk> writes:


> Bear in mind the limited write lifetime of flash memory. Don't put /var
> or /tmp on such a card if you can avoid it.

Well, I'm not sure any other alternatives are attractive? Unless
I find a way to mount those partitions off of a usb stick, or
some other idea?

Since they are not frequently updated and have minimal installed software
(iptables on firewalls and DNS on DNS servers) accompanied by the
fact that most devices have internal wear leveling; it should take
many years to reach the write cycle limits?


> http://linitx.com/viewproduct.php?prodid=10448

very cool! exactly what I could not find.



> > Issue 4. Cloning or Duplicating.
> > As many of you know, installations can be quite time consuming,
> > and challenging on old PCs. So what I intend to do is take
> > and currently running machine and stream the contents to
> > another machine with a CF burner or pull the CF card from
> > a machine that is in good shape but shutdown and duplicate it.
 
> Why not copy the contents of a card to a hard disk somewhere? That way
> you don't have to disturb a running machine to make a copy.

> > DD, cpio, scp (example syntax) in a step by step)?

> You could dd the card to a file and use the same file every time you need
> a new card.

Um I do not mean to be a pain, but could you provide a little bit
of pseudo-syntax? Assume I have shutdown a 4 GB CF firewall card
and moved it to a reader/writer on another machine. First I need
to format the raw (new) 4GB CF card from a reader.

/media/sdb1 shows up, but when I run 'fdisk /media/sdb1' I get:

last_lba(): I don't know how to handle files with mode 40755
You will not be able to write the partition table.


In the past I have formated the CF cards on the new machine being built,
but I need help figuring out how to do this, from a CF reader/writer
on another machine (thus avoiding a traditional install) ?


James