Ramdisk / recompile kernel?

Forum: HD Install
Topic: Ramdisk / recompile kernel?
started by: beyonddeath

Posted by beyonddeath on May 20 2005,04:09

Hi all,

I'm trying to setup a pc to run as an mp3 player in my car, but in an effort to save some power and protect the hard drive I want to load mp3's into a ramdisk and have the hard drive spindown. This shouldnt be too hard, however I just installed dsl on my pIII 500 and for some reason ram disks are limited to 4096 kb. There is an option in the kernel config to set the default ramdisk size, but I was wondering if i can make a 64mb (or bigger) ramdisk without recompiling the kernel.

If i cant do that, how can i recompile the kernel, I patched a 2.4.26 kernel with the knoppix-patch but it would be much easier to have the dsl config file to work from, instead of working from a stock kernel. Is it available for download somewhere?

Thanks for the help!
Justin

Posted by ke4nt1 on May 20 2005,05:02

Justin,

Welcome to DSL..

I run a fanless EPIA 5000 mini-itx in my jeep for serving up mp3's in the car.
Aware of the issues with hard drives in a vehicle ( especially in a jeep! ),
I put in a CF-2-IDE converter, and added a 128MB CF card.
( they are really cheap now.. )

I boot DSL off of that in place of a hard drive.
( it's formatted as fat32/ frugally installed/ so no fsck errors on shutdown !! )

Then I have a couple of 256 and 512 MB usb pendrives..
They hold between 100-200 tunes each, at 128bit/stereo ..

I pop one in the USBport, and have another loaded up and standing by..
All solid state, no moving parts, and works great..

Hours and hours of tunes.. I also run the output to a FM transmitter,
so I can share my grunge, black, and death metal with all my
" stuck-in-traffic " commuters

Haven't been shot at yet !!

And, I'm working on adding a wireless adapter to it, so I can load
up more stuff to the pendrive, when the jeep is in the driveway,
and I'm in the house in the big easy chair..

73
ke4nt

Posted by beyonddeath on May 20 2005,14:18

I have thought about this, but i have over 20gb's in music and i like to access at least 10gb's of it on a regular basis so solid state just wont cut it in a reasonable price range. (ie 0$, as i have a 20gb hard drive sittin there doin nothing) I also liked the idea of getting todo some coding to swap the mp3's around and play them. I'm going to run the pc straight into my digital crossover so that theres no loss that you would normally experience with transmitting it in fm.

Justin

Posted by beyonddeath on May 20 2005,16:39

I figured out the solution, At boot you can pass the kernel ramdisk_size=N and it will setup ramdisks of Nkb size so if i want a 64mb ramdisk i just pass 65536 and then when it finishes booting
i do
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ram0 bs=1k count=65536
mke2fs /dev/ram0 65536
mount /dev/ram0 /mnt/ramdisk

Posted by ke4nt1 on May 26 2005,04:39

Here's another app I found that may also help with that HD spinning down.

< http://freshmeat.net/project....=197134 >

73
ke4nt