If these were being used at home that is the more practical solution. However the projects I am working on will deploy the RPi in places like the top floor of a building I do not have unlimited access to and in a locked room that I do not have the key. Or at a tower site a couple of hours drive away. I will have the original image files made so it will just be an issue of re-imaging a new SD card. I just want to be sure it is a long time between incidents of needing to do that.
Thanks for your input. Bruce > On May 4, 2016, at 1:35 PM, Chris McQuistion <cmcquist...@watkins.edu> wrote: > > There are higher-end SD cards that supposedly include wear leveling. Those > would be the cards designed for HD cameras and such. > > You could go that route or you could just image your system and make periodic > backups. If the card goes bad, replace it with another $10 SD card, restored > from backup, and call it a day. > > I have two Raspberry Pi systems at home and that's what I plan to do (just > back them up and replace them when they die.) > > On a system that isn't do a large number of writes, an SD card should last > for a LONG time since reads don't wear a card out. > > Chris > > On Wed, May 4, 2016 at 1:04 PM, Bruce Martin <marti...@gmail.com > <mailto:marti...@gmail.com>> wrote: > I know that dd is one of those fundamental linux commands that are used > occasionally but like rm need to be used carefully. > > I admit to being a rather “Appliance” operator when it come stop Linux these > days. I use the bistro as it is and usually install only the software and > updates that are part of the distribution. In the past I did download the > source of the latest version of software i wanted to run and compiled it > after tweaking the makefile and sometimes some of the code. These days I do > not do that very much. Lazy? Maybe but the distributions have gotten better > at keeping things reasonably up to date and stable and bleeding edge is not > my forte anymore. > > That being said I have been playing around with Raspberry Pi for the last few > years. I tend to buy two or three of each version as they come out. I have > two deployed for specific Ham radio stuff and am embarking on a project to > help some friends out by setting up some Broadband Speed monitoring nodes. > One of the shortcomings of the Raspberry Pi (RPi) is the use of SD cards. > Even when you are not doing a lot of writing to the card the life of a card > seems to be less than a year or so. > > I have read that the newer SDHC cards incorporate wear leveling much like an > SSD does. With this in mind I want to set up an SD card but only partition it > to use a third or a fourth of the disk space and leave the rest of the card > free and unformatted for wear leveling use. > > My experience, thus far, is that when setting up a card for the RPi the > distribution expands itself to use up the entire card. I want to try setting > things up on an 8GB car. After everything is configured I want to create an > image of the card and then write that image to a 16GB or 32GB card. Is there > a parameter in dd to limit how much of the card is used and leave the rest as > unformatted? Do I need to create the partitions on the 32GB card and image > each partition separately from the 8GB card and write that image to a > specific partition on the 32GB card? Is there some other/better way to do > this? > > I want to try to get to the point of being able to set up a RPi and let it > sit and run for years and not have to redo the card every year. Stories of > servers stuck in closets or left in a wall void during remodeling come to > mind. We had an APRS Igate node at Vanderbilt that ran the better part of a > decade without a purposeful reboot that was running on a floppy drive distro > that Sean Jewett and a few others worked on. I want that kind of longevity in > the RPi nodes I am deploying. > > Thoughts? > Suggestions? > Questions? > > Bruce > > -- > Bruce W. Martin, KQ4TV > Trustee for AA4VU > Vanderbilt University Amateur Radio Club -- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NLUG" group. To post to this group, send email to nlug-talk@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to nlug-talk+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nlug-talk?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NLUG" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to nlug-talk+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
