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Topic: Frugal Picture Frame, Data Corruption?, What are the chances?

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beakmyn

Group: Members
Posts: 63
Joined: Sep. 2004

Posted: Dec. 13 2006,17:08

So I just rebuilt my digital picture (www.frontiernet.net/~beakmynt). Still have to update the write up though.

Anyway the issue I had with the old system was data corruption by not cleanly shutting down the system. Had a few power outages when the frame was running, etc.

So, now I've got a Grub Frugal install working with Feh and unclutter .dsl'ed, a peristant /home /opt and a few other things backed up for persistant passwords and ssh.

I mount hda3 (where the pictures are) read-only (-o remount,ro)

So, here's the question:

Being that a frugal install is basically a LiveCD on the hard disk, if the machine is booted and running and then I lose power or suffer some other "unclean" shutdown. Will there be data corruption to my install?

My understanding is that the system is basically in a pseudo read-only state.

Granted if I haven't saved any changes by shutting down and letting the system do a normal backup to hda2, I'll lose those changes....

If I issue the mount command I see

Code Sample

dsl@ttyp0[frame]$ mount
/dev/root on / type ext2 (rw)
/dev/hda1 on /cdrom type ext2 (rw)
/dev/cloop on /KNOPPIX type iso9660 (ro)
/ramdisk on /ramdisk type tmpfs (rw,size=59164k,size=55267k)
unionfs on /bin type unionfs (rw,dirs=/ramdisk/bin=rw:/bin=ro)
unionfs on /dev type unionfs (rw,dirs=/ramdisk/dev=rw:/dev=ro)
unionfs on /etc type unionfs (rw,dirs=/ramdisk/etc=rw:/etc=rw)
unionfs on /lib type unionfs (rw,dirs=/ramdisk/lib=rw:/lib=ro)
unionfs on /sbin type unionfs (rw,dirs=/ramdisk/sbin=rw:/sbin=ro)
unionfs on /usr type unionfs (rw,dirs=/ramdisk/usr=rw:/usr=ro)
unionfs on /var type unionfs (rw,dirs=/ramdisk/var=rw)
/dev/hda3 on /mnt/hda3 type ext2 (ro,nosuid,nodev)
dsl@ttyp0[frame]$

My concern is /dev/hda1 being mounted rw which makes me think if I lose power it could conceivably be in the middle of a write and corrupt my install and then I'd have to do another frugal install to be able to boot.

As, you've probably guessed I'm trying to make the system as bullet-resistant as possible.

--------------
Have you seen my Damn Small Digital Picture frame?
http://www.frontiernet.net/~pictureframe
http://rapidshare.com/files/27769266/pframedsl.iso.html
http://www.joyceandkevin.com/dslpictureframe/pframedsl.rar

^thehatsrule^ Offline

Group: Members
Posts: 3275
Joined: July 2006

Posted: Dec. 13 2006,17:19

Remove the "frugal" keyword from the bootloader to make it mounted as RO by default (possibly remount,rw when needed?)

Alternatively/additionally: use toram. But I see that's out of the question as you do not have enough ram.

beakmyn

Group: Members
Posts: 63
Joined: Sep. 2004

Posted: Dec. 13 2006,20:13

Thanks, I figured there was more that could be done.

I ruled out toram early on when I tried to remaster it and it flat out locked up. 80MB RAM just isn't enough but for the picture frame it works great.

With the current set-up I shouldn't ever need to make hda1 writeable since I can still manually load Samba.dsl from hda2 remount hda3 rw and copy over new pictures then remount ro.

Someday maybe I'll set up rsync but I don't update the pictures much.

Thanks again for the tip.

--------------
Have you seen my Damn Small Digital Picture frame?
http://www.frontiernet.net/~pictureframe
http://rapidshare.com/files/27769266/pframedsl.iso.html
http://www.joyceandkevin.com/dslpictureframe/pframedsl.rar

JoeOldendick Offline

Group: Members
Posts: 5
Joined: Dec. 2006

Posted: Jan. 01 2007,06:53

How much RAM is needed to load to ram.

I have 2 partitions the first partition has DSL and the scripts and the 2nd partition is basically just photos.

I am not sure I understand 100% though how to mount the first partition as read only everytime the machine boots. I certainly don't want any corruption.

the 2nd partition will be updated manually and I could ssh to mount and unmount that 2nd partition.

right now it is a 266mhz box with 128 mb of ram...not sure i need to do more than that.

^thehatsrule^ Offline

Group: Members
Posts: 3275
Joined: July 2006

Posted: Jan. 01 2007,07:01

128mb of ram should just be enough to boot with toram. You could also copy the photos from the 2nd partition over to the ramdisk then unmount that.

Quote

I am not sure I understand 100% though how to mount the first partition as read only everytime the machine boots. I certainly don't want any corruption.

What don't you get? Please see my previous post in this thread.

10 replies since Dec. 13 2006,17:08

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