On Wed, Dec 16, 2009 at 8:50 AM, Jonathan Thornburg <jth...@astro.indiana.edu> wrote: > In <http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=126090233628943&w=1> > Nick Holland gave a bunch of excellent reasons to just do a standard > install on a cheap compact-flash (CF) card. Another point... with > today's compact flash cards, you may well be able to simply ignore > the issue of finite-number-of-write-cycles. > > For example, 2 years ago I set up a home firewall using a 1GB > Kingston CF card. For precisely the reasons Nick Holland outlined, > I used a standard OpenBSD install (done by plugging the CF card into > a USB-to-CF adaptor and then connecting the USB to my laptop). The > only "interesting" things I did to reduce writes [and boost performance; > the WRAP is a slow 586-class processor with only 128MB memory] were to > make /tmp and /usr/tmp mfs, mount /usr readonly, and mount /var softdep. > For the present discussion, what's relevant is that although I planned > to try to make more of the disk readonly (maybe putting the often-written > parts of /var into mfs), I never got around to doing so. And 2 years > later, that firewall is still working just fine: > > # cat /etc/motd > OpenBSD 4.2-stable (GENERIC) #3: Fri Dec 7 14:23:16 GMT 2007 > > Welcome to OpenBSD: The proactively secure Unix-like operating system. > > Please use the sendbug(1) utility to report bugs in the system. > Before reporting a bug, please try to reproduce it with the latest > version of the code. With bug reports, please try to ensure that > enough information to reproduce the problem is enclosed, and if a > known fix for it exists, include that as well. > > # cat /etc/fstab > /dev/wd0a / ffs rw,noatime,softdep 1 1 > swap /tmp mfs rw,noatime,nodev,nosuid,async,-s=65536 0 0 > # note /usr is READ-ONLY > /dev/wd0g /usr ffs ro,noatime,nodev,nosuid,softdep 1 2 > swap /usr/tmp mfs rw,noatime,nodev,nosuid,async,-s=65536 0 0 > /dev/wd0e /var ffs rw,noatime,nodev,nosuid,softdep 1 2 > # > > I'm sure that original CF card would *eventually* fail if I kept it in > service long enough... but it's a lot easier to just buy a new CF card > and reinstall OpenBSD every year or two, than it is to fiddle with a > non-standard installation. In fact, I may well not bother with the > read-only /usr the next time I reinstall it... > > [Yes, I know, 4.2 is seriously out of date. I actually have a new 2GB > CF card sitting on my desk ready for a 4.6-stable install, which should > happen very soon...] > > ciao, > > -- > -- "Jonathan Thornburg [remove -animal to reply]" <jth...@astro.indiana-zebra.edu> > Dept of Astronomy, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA > "If the triangles made a god, it would have three sides." -- Voltaire > >
As I've said before, I currently run OpenBSD 4.6 on a laptop that boots a 512mb flash drive, with space to spare. If you only install bsd, bsd.rd, base and etc, you use about 160-170mb on i386. No need to customise or shrink down. -- Aaron Mason - Programmer, open source addict I've taken my software vows - for beta or for worse
