On Fri, 2004-04-23 at 00:51, Jean-Michel POURE wrote: > Dear Graig, > > The Debian new installer (beta release 3) stopped during installation on an > 128 USB key. After mounting the key on my workstation, it appeared to be 100% > full. >
Did you try the potato installer? I think the base install is around 80M. You may want to look at some of these small distros, or even ptx. > What do you recommand: install to a disc partition, strip down and copy to > the > USB key? > > I would be in favour of working on an interactive script build script. There > are several boards here waiting for USB keys (to reduce the heat) and I would > prefer to invest in 64 Mb keys. The smaller ... the better. > If you want to learn about building a small root filesystem, you need to work from /sbin/init forward, not stripping down a full installation. You can check out buildrootsystem script from Chapter 4 at embeddedlinuxinterfacing.com. That script would require significant modification/additions to meet your needs. > Also, compressed FS and RAM virtual disc may enhance the life of an USB key. > By the way, can USB keys be destroyed by too many read/writes? Yes you can destroy with too many writes. You need to mount /tmp and /var on a ramdisk if you want to lengthen your devices life.
