[Soekris] hard disk & wifi card

[Breen Ouellette]

Greg Mortensen wrote:
> 'echo "/dev/wd0a / ffs rw,noatime 1 1" > /etc/fstab' is dicking around 
> with the base install?  ;) 

While noatime on it's own makes a difference to the amount of writes, it 
doesn't make the flash card more write friendly than an HD, it just cuts 
down on the number of writes that normally take place. To truly protect 
the card you have to replace 'rw' with 'ro', and then deal with the 
baggage which that decision brings with it. Now you are looking at 
moving /dev, /var, and /tmp to mfs from an alternate location stored on 
the flash card, altering rc to prevent it from enabling writes to root 
(which it does even if you specify 'ro' in fstab, or at least it used to 
on the last release I used on a CF card), and, either manually or 
through a script, jumping through a number of hoops to ensure that when 
you change files in the mfs filesystems they are also updated on the 
flash (by temporarily changing the CF filesystem to writeable, copying 
the only changed files to cut down on the writes, and then switching the 
CF back to read only). Then, when you go to enable services which are 
disabled by default (like named, for instance), you find that they write 
to files in places like /etc, so you have a whole new game of 
find-the-problem-and-then-dick-around-to-fix-it. Plus, add scripts for 
saving logs on a regular basis, and for saving things if you halt the 
system. And I'm sure I've missed some other things as well. The beast is 
starting to look like the bastard half-brother of a base install.

And in the end, after all this fussing, one of my cards still crapped 
out after having done only two fresh installs using bsd.rd to install 
directly to the card, when each time I immediately afterwards jumped 
through all the hoops to try to protect the card. Maybe it was bad luck. 
Maybe I made a bunch of writes to the card that I overlooked. It 
probably had something to do with the fact that I was not following the 
standard path of an install-and-forget firewall. In the end, it just 
seemed so much simpler to get a laptop drive and install the old 
fashioned way.  :)

For someone in my position - enough knowledge to know what's bad, but 
not necessarily enough to make sure things don't go bad, and more than 
willing to hack the case with a dremel and/or drill - a HD is a great 
option. It works great, and burns half the calories (in the form of 
stress).  :)

It may be that there is a better way to do it than I have described. At 
the time that I was using CF, I was not aware of a better way, and in 
fact some of what I did was done through trial and error because no one 
else seemed to be doing it (or writing about it, anyway). Now I have the 
freedom to do things like 'make world' which I couldn't do before with 
CF. And the 40GB beach is a lot nicer than the 512MB sandbox that I was 
playing in before.

Oh alright, no more excuses, I'll just come right out and say it - I'm 
being lazy. I just don't equate the opposite with being a hero.  :)

Breeno