Damn Small Linux - Not!

shutuphuman · Joined: 26 Jun 2006 Posts: 1

Hey all.

I have a small computer with a 128 Meg flash card as a hard drive. i wanted to try dsl on this. the trouble is though the drive is not shown up as hda i think it is hdb or something. (you can tell a newbie a mil eoff)

was wondering is there any way i can using a normal pc copy relavant files across to the flash card activate it in some way so it boots. thus avoiding the install process as its not happy not being hda

thanks alot Paul

ethyr2000 · Joined: 08 Jun 2006 Posts: 9

I have a 500Mhz Crusoe (5x86) with ~300MB ram and a 8GB Compact flash card as a hard drive. At 8GB, I don't need a compressed filesystem. Also, swap on the flash card is NOT an option. I would like to find a thin linux distro .. without many duplicate applications from which to add desired pkg/src software later. Also I'm thinking unionfs is needed for my prefered design.

I'd like any advice on if dsl-n would be good for this and/or any advice in regard to the application of the hardware.

I'm thinking...:
1) Have a single partition on the CF card uncompressed.
2) Use a unionfs between the CF card ext2 (read-only) and a tmpfs(read-write) for root filesystem.
3) (OPTIONAL) Have /tmp on a tmpfs by itself.
4) As resources demand, merge the union tmpfs onto the CF ext2.
5) The CF ext2 would NOT use atime in the fstab as it is for full sync of the system in a "stable?" form.

If the hd install uses a compressed filesystem image that cannot be altered. Then the modification would be another filesystem branch to unionfs.
1) tmpfs( read/write)
2) altered base filesystem (read only -except for backup)
3) read only compressed filesystem

Also having the kernel src would be good, as I may need to rebuild the kernel for my atmel usb wifi.

Any help is appreciated

[IDC]Dragon · Joined: 22 Apr 2006 Posts: 41 Location: Hannover, Germany

No real answer, just some comments:

@shutuphuman:
It doesn't matter under which name your CF appears. After a CD boot, do a frugal install, which is a desktop menu item. You may even do so on a different PC, iirc.

@ethyr2000:
I don't know if you can disable the compression when remastering, that may be one option. Certainly it would be nicer to have the (read-only) files all spread out, instead of into on big KNOPPIX blob.
Keep me (us) updated about your progress, please, I'd like to do similar.
Edit: if the transfer is slow (like with CF), compression makes your system faster, in case the CPU is available and faster with decompression than the loading.

Another distro worth looking at is slax. It is small, modular, specialized on live CD boot (useful to us CF users, too) with unionfs, has recent components for both kernel and addons. I'm gonna try that as soon as I have time, because I'm desperate about a later kernel than DSL-N is offering. (Sorry Robert, no offense)
Anybody with slax experience?

ethyr2000 · Joined: 08 Jun 2006 Posts: 9

Thanks for the input [IDC]Dragon. I'll definately check out SLAX. I'm also looking at ZenWalk. I'll keep you posted.