On 6/10/05, Neil Bothwick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Fri, 10 Jun 2005 03:59:16 -0700, Mark Knecht wrote: > > > On 6/10/05, Neil Bothwick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > CF cards aren't lockable, but some CD-IDE adaptors have a write > > > protect jumper. Of course, you'll have problems saving any settings > > > with a write- protected /etc, so JFFS2 may be a better option. This > > > is a filesystem specifically for flash driver, that avoids repeated > > > writing to the same part of the disk. > > Or, of course, you could simply mount the filesystem ro.
Ah, there's always a smart guy out there. ;-) Why didn't I think of that? Good point! There much be a way to do this sort of thing, again because I have the install CD as an example. > > > For me this is about how to make a quiet MythTV frontend machine, not > > a 'Gentoo PC.' No hard drive is less noise. My thought was that once > > the machine was configured I'd like to lock the flash and never write > > ANYTHING to it. > > What about the MythTV data? Is that on another box, networked? Exactly. We have a server with lots of storage elsewhere on the network. This flash drive machine has no purpose other than playing that MythTV recordings. It's just a single function box. Although the first unit has a DVD drive in it since I had to build Gentoo from a universal CD I figure that long term I don't even need that since the picture playing a DVD from Myth is nowhere near as good as playing for our DVD players. > > > The only time I'd possibly do anything on the flash > > was to update the system, maybe once every few months. Other than that > > if the machine is turned on and playing TV shows then I'd be happy > > with no logging or any type and the drive doesn't change at all. > > It sounds like you need something like one of these, which keep the > card inside the box, and treat it as a hard disk (but silent). More or less. It could be inside or outside. What I sort of liked about the external USB flash drive was the idea that I could possibly learn to build the distro in a chrooted environment on my laptop, for instance, and then write it to multiple flash drives for multiple boxes. I've set this system up here, but I'm also building units for my parents who live 350 miles away. Right now they have a Gentoo backend and an XBox frontend. If a significant rev of Myth or Gentoo came along my thought was I could write it on one of this little guys, test it here, and then send it to my dad with instructions to power down, replace the old flash drive with the new flash drive, boot up, and he's running again. He sends me back the old flash drive and we can go through that process whenever we want. I could also ftp a new version to his Myth backend box with instructions on how he could overwrite the old drive but if somethig goes wrong then the unit doesn't work at all. Another possibility is to skip the flash drive completely, put in a cheap CD and then build essentially a Gentoo LiveCD that boots the system and starts Myth. No hard drive, no flash drive and probably the cheapest solution. Might be more noisy though if the drive continues to spin forever... Maybe there's instructions out there on how to do this sort of thing but I haven't found them yet. > > Removing all hard disks would also reduce the amount of heat generated, > so you could reduce fan speeds to make it even quieter. > Exactly my though. I bought the 512MB flash drive for $42 on sale yesterday. If I remove the hard drive and the DVD drive then a Pundit-R comes out at about $275-$300 which is at least reasonable, but still a lot higher than Tivo which sells the hardware at a loss and then makes it up in subscription costs. (Or so I think...) - Mark -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
