[Soekris] Imaging the OS for a 1GB CF

[Joshua Jackson]

On Saturday 09 October 2004 11:14 am, Mike Langley wrote:
> Afternoon folks,
>
> There will be no ports returning any ACK's or responding to pings on this
> one, it will run totally silent except for the HTTP.
> I need to find out what the best way to transfer the development box into
> a 1GB CF would be and if someone already has this? If so I would love it
> if someone could send me a jumper to get going or just let me know what
> the easiest way to get the environment onto the CF is.
> Also, does anyone know what files I can lose from the minimal install to
> lighten the size of Fedora Core 2?
> Any other thoughts, ideas I may be missing to make my work easier?

The easiest way to get Fedora Core onto a compact flash would be to use a CF 
to IDE adapter and install it directly onto the CF using another box that can 
boot from CD ROM. You would need to be sure to edit the boot loader to deal 
with a serial console before transferring the CF unit to the 4801.

That being said, I would strongly caution against using a compact flash for a 
Fedora Core box. The amount of system and web log data generated will be a 
little harsh on the CF. CF units have a limited number of writes before 
failure that may be pretty easily reached for a box with a lot of heavy 
logging going on.

CF units are also fairly slow compared to hard drives when it comes to writing 
data. If the box becomes heavily used, you may end up with serious 
performance problems if the CF can't keep up. Not to mention the performance 
hit you will take if the box starts to swap to a CF.

Ideally, you should use an embedded distro of some form to accomplish your 
task. I can't give you many personal suggestions as I always build my own 
embedded systems from scratch using applications/libraries such as Busybox, 
uClibc, etc to reduce the overall size of the installation. Perhaps someone 
using a ready made embedded distro can offer a suggestion or two.

I have heard that Peanut Linux is a good choice for embedded systems if you 
are not wanting to roll your own distro.

Just to give you an idea of what can be accomplished using apps specifically 
developed for embedded hardware, my company's commercial firewall offering 
packs IPSEC, PPTP with local and Radius authentication, firewalling, Apache 
1.3 + PHP (for web administration), UPnP, Dyndns services, DHCP, SNMP, and 
various other goodies into an install that takes up 13MB of compact flash 
storage and runs entirely from a RAM drive. For pre-packaged hardware, I use 
net4801's for low-end (should be read as "for smaller networks") firewalls.

--
Joshua Jackson
Vortech Consulting, LLC
http://www.vortech.net