Re: [gentoo-user] CF and Gentoo
4A. Best method to duplicate the CF card live while the system is running. Best method I now which is near effort-less, but requires preparation is to setup your drive initially as a RAID-1 mirror but force it to have only one drive (if you don't want it mirrored all the time). Then, add a new drive to the RAID-1 and watch the synchronization. Once finished, take the drive out by failing it cleanly then by removing it, and you have an integral raid-mirrored copy of your original drive while it was running. On my own home-gateway, I used this to burn the latest state of the system to disk, and I used usb keys as main drives. At boot, it would pick up which ever is in most current state and update the other. And later in my local script, I would fail the hard drive so this gateway would become completely silent, except for the fan. (Noise was a big factor in my setup as it uses real old hardware) You could do exactly the same using a device in ram to avoid witting to the compact flash. It would boot from the single-mirror on your drive, sync with a device-in-ram (see ramfs and losetup, quite a hack but always worked for me), then fail the physical drive and run only on ram. Then in your local.stop script re-sync with the physical drive. The biggest problem with this method and flash cards is with the write limit. The RAID sync will overwrite every single byte on the card, so every physical sector will decrease in lifespan. Where is you used an intelligent copy program such as rsync, sector lifespan would increase more randomly and more slowly. I do not recommend the use of flash cards for anything else than read-only data (that you can change sometimes). I compare it to a better-cd-rw. Simon
[gentoo-user] CF and Gentoo
Hello, Background: I've been on a journey to migrate many servers (firewalls and dns) to Compact Flash (CF) drives to improve reliability, ease in new installation, ease replacing hard drivers that fail, duplicating drives that fail and cloning servers with a simple, straightforward methodology. This is the CF method, later on I'll do a USB page, but, lots of older hardware will not boot off of usb, but if somebody wants to write to me a methodology for usb sticks, that would be cool. I'm not exactly the quintessential sys-admin, so as I outline my ideas and issues, please feel encouraged to help me make the efforts better. Hopefully, it will result in a wiki that everyone can use. Issue 1. Cost containment. Right now, I'm using 4GB Sandisk CF cards in vintage x86 and k5 machines without issue. I use CF-2-ide converters that are not labels, made in china. It'd be nice to be able to use some of the less expensive 4GB CF cards, but I have not tested any, and do not wish to purchase a random sample to establish confidence. Any one with low-cost CF cards that work reasonable well, just let me know. Issue 2. Ease of access. Currently, I had a bunch of old IDE chasis that are locked and come in a tray form. Once you install the tray, you can easily remove the tray from the front of the machine. The CF-2-ide converters which contain the CF cards are easily access. I do this because I have many of these old removable ide trays already. What would be better is to find pci internal slot cards that have the CF-2-ide built in and the CF cards would be accessible from the back of the machines. Any suggests for this type of hardware would been keen. Issue 3. Ease of purchase. I'd really like to find a single, low-cost supplier of the CF cards and the CF-2-ide converter hardware. Any suggestions? Issue 4. Cloning or Duplicating. As many of you know, installations can be quite time consuming, and challenging on old PCs. So what I intend to do is take and currently running machine and stream the contents to another machine with a CF burner or pull the CF card from a machine that is in good shape but shutdown and duplicate it. Two issues I see. 4A. Best method to duplicate the CF card live while the system is running. DD, cpio, scp (example syntax) in a step by step)? 4B. What is the minimal amount of data/files that need to be edited bot build a similar but unique machine. 1. IP address (edit conf.d/net). 2. Name (edit) conf.d/hostname). Anything else? James
Re: [gentoo-user] CF and Gentoo
On Thu, 25 Sep 2008 19:18:56 + (UTC), James wrote: I've been on a journey to migrate many servers (firewalls and dns) to Compact Flash (CF) drives to improve reliability, Bear in mind the limited write lifetime of flash memory. Don't put /var or /tmp on such a card if you can avoid it. http://linitx.com/viewproduct.php?prodid=10448 Issue 4. Cloning or Duplicating. As many of you know, installations can be quite time consuming, and challenging on old PCs. So what I intend to do is take and currently running machine and stream the contents to another machine with a CF burner or pull the CF card from a machine that is in good shape but shutdown and duplicate it. Why not copy the contents of a card to a hard disk somewhere? That way you don't have to disturb a running machine to make a copy. 4A. Best method to duplicate the CF card live while the system is running. Don't. DD, cpio, scp (example syntax) in a step by step)? You could dd the card to a file and use the same file every time you need a new card. 4B. What is the minimal amount of data/files that need to be edited bot build a similar but unique machine. 1. IP address (edit conf.d/net). 2. Name (edit) conf.d/hostname). Both of these can be handled by DHCP. -- Neil Bothwick File not found. Should I fake it? (Y/N) signature.asc Description: PGP signature
