Installing on CompactFlash Card

Forum: HD Install
Topic: Installing on CompactFlash Card
started by: ravngundersen

Posted by ravngundersen on April 26 2004,08:17

I have a VIA mini-itx board (this very small mainboards).
Both mainboardboard and psu is fanless, and runs on 12 volts.

Wouldnt it be nice to avoid using a harddrive, and keep it 100% silent?
A CF to IDE adapter became the solution, in other words the cf card is connected to the ide slot, and you do not need a usb port.

I have googled around and found out that CF cards does not like to act as a harddrive and they die quickly if used in that matter. This has to do with agressive read/write from the ide port. But this does not apply to DSL since we just boot it of the cf card, and then work in memory.

Well, first of all you install the adapter (must be primary master), and insert a cf card. A 64 mb or larger is needed.
You boot up dsl from a live cd and enter a terminal. You need to partition the card with eather fdisk or cfdisk. First take a sudo su and then run ©fdisk /dev/hda. Make two partition one for the "live cd" on 50 mb, and a second one as backup on whatever you have left. Remember to set the first partition to bootable. Exit and write the new table.

Then start frugal_instal.sh and follow the onscreen instructions.
If frugal cant find your new partitions, try to reboot first.

When frugal exited and I tried to reboot i only got "L" in lilo. I googled around again and found out that a solution to this might be to change the lba/normal/large setting in bios. I tried this and it booted right up when i changed it to Large.
On another computer I did not have to change anything.

Now you can boot it up and enjoy.

Posted by caulktel on April 28 2004,04:23

I have also had good success running DSL on a 256 meg Sans Disk compact flash, plugged into a CF to IDE converter. I did a regular install (not frugal) , but did not create a swap partition as this is what is hard on CF drives due to the fact that it is writing to the same spot time after time, however I have 96 meg of ram and don't need a swap for what I am doing (running XMMS on the Shoutcast network). if I was using a smaller CF, like 64-128 meg, I would probably do a frugal_install, but would need more ram as everything would be running in ram. It is so cool to have my system boot up without making any sounds. I will be looking for new ways to use Compact Flash and of course, DSL!

Joel