On Friday 01 October 2010 12:08:24 Russell Polo wrote:
>    I'm running a laptop on a Compact flash disk
> http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=1012554&l=c3cbb2ff8c&id=1645041910
> 
> I chose to use the CF disk because is was cheaper than the smallest
> laptop hard drive I could find to replace a dead dead hard drive. ( I
> think it was about $28  around the time I uploaded that photo)

CF cards have gotten very cheap lately.  For the last few years I've been 
running some Alix boxes by PC Engines [this is the current equivalent to the 
2c3 boards I'm running:  http://www.pcengines.ch/alix2d3.htm] using some 1 GB 
CF cards from them that were $10.

> what precautions should I be taking (if any ) in addition to EXT2  and
> "noatime" (so it doesn't update the access times for files ) should  be
> taking ?

ext2 + mounting 'noatime' covers the majority of it.  One other obvious thing: 
don't make a swap partition (nor a swap file) on a flash device.

And if you really care, store temporary files into a ramdisk to minimize write 
cycles on the flash.  You don't /have/ to do this if you don't want to, though 
-- for normal uses like a firewall, I haven't bothered with this.

> The machine has no critical data on it. It's used only to run firefox,
> ssh  and vncviewer. I had Ubuntu on it but that didn't suspend/resume
> properly and one day  the drive failed in some way that it could not be
> mounted by anything.
> 
> I reformatted the drive, installed FC13 a few months ago, has been fine
> since. ( suspend/resume works )

suspend/hibernate/resume are tricky and are very sensitive to kernel changes.  
Ubuntu tend to take a few risks in terms of their choices of how they build 
their kernel; that has upsides and downsides.  Red Hat, Debian, and others 
tend to be more conservative.  Not sure about Fedora, but I suspect it would 
lie somewhere in-between.

  -- Chris

--

Chris Knadle
[email protected]
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