[Soekris] 1GB Compact Flash 6.06 Dapper & Soekris

[Jed Clear]

On Thu, 29 Nov 2007, ervin wrote:
>  I'm pxe booting ubuntu dapper 6.06 to a Soekris 4501 (64MB RAM & 1GB
> Compact Flash card) ... dhcp, tftp and the server install is running
> smoothly until I want to write the partitioning to the CF card ....
>
>  I tried guided and manual partitioning .... same issue, which is:
>  ---------------------------- issue
> -------------------------------------------------
>  The attempt to mount a file system with type swap in IDE1 master,  |
>           | partition #5 (hda5) at none failed.
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> I made tests on different CF card 1GB & 4GB and from both Sandisk &
> IBM ... no difference.
>
>  My manual partitions:
>
>  200 MB           /
>  100 MB           swap
>  350 MB           /usr
>  350 MB           /var

I'm a BSD person, so I won't speculate on exactly what's going on, but it
seems like this is protecting you from your own folly.  Swap is the last
thing you want on a flash disk.  Flash has a limited number of writes
before it degrades.  ISTR that the spec for write cycles in in the
100s of thousands, which is fine for a digital camera, but a swap
partition will chew through that in no time.

Suggest you find a HOWTO specifically for a flash filesystem, which you
will probably find has no swap at all.  If you really need to have virtual
memory for your application, you could consider a CF format microdrive, or
an IDE laptop drive.

-Jed