Re: OT: Compact Flash Longevity; was Re: dd image file to compact flash takes very long
Hi, Matt Garman wrote: ... Has anyone else out there been brave enough to go rw on their CF cards? Results? I'm using a 512 MB Sandisk Ultra II "24/7" in a home server for about 2 years now. No problems. I suppose power failures can be a problem with CompactFlash cards (don't know if it just was bad coincidence). Before the Ultra II I used a regular Sandisk 512 MB CompactFlash card, which broke when I had a power loss at home. Fortunately, Sandisk cards have a long warranty period :) regards, Andreas
Re: OT: Compact Flash Longevity; was Re: dd image file to compact flash takes very long
On 09/11/2005, at 6:38 AM, Alexander Hall wrote: Has anyone else out there been brave enough to go rw on their CF cards? Results? I have been brave (read: lazy) enough to keep my Soekris running with a single root partition mounted r/w on my (home) gateway Soekris box since i got it for my birthday in June (how pleased I was to see 3.7 pre-installed on the CF - thanks Wim :) ). No massive traffic, but I expect it to log stuff quite regularly (i just noticed the pflog adding in general at least one packet per minute). I have a Sandisk Ultra II 1GB in my Sun Ultra 10 firewall which has been r/w for a little more than 6 months now. Nothing special as far as logging goes yet. No problems. Took the plunge after Henning pointed out the Sandisk longevity calculations document. Shane J Pearson
Re: OT: Compact Flash Longevity; was Re: dd image file to compact flash takes very long
Matt Garman wrote: Has anyone else out there been brave enough to go rw on their CF cards? Results? I have been brave (read: lazy) enough to keep my Soekris running with a single root partition mounted r/w on my (home) gateway Soekris box since i got it for my birthday in June (how pleased I was to see 3.7 pre-installed on the CF - thanks Wim :) ). No massive traffic, but I expect it to log stuff quite regularly (i just noticed the pflog adding in general at least one packet per minute). I've been thinking about mfs'ing and mounting r/o but since it's non-critical, I'll probably keep it as it is and see what happens. I even got a laptop hd in it, but I would like to keep it in standby mode as much as possible. Anyway, no issues whatsoever, so far. /Alexander
Re: OT: Compact Flash Longevity; was Re: dd image file to compact flash takes very long
On 07/11/05, Matt Garman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Are you using "regular" CF cards? What is the role of the system > for which you did this (i.e. does a lot of writing occur)? Yup, regular cards from one of the big-box retailers. I'm writing them as /var/log > FYI, you can buy "industrial" compact flash cards which are supposed > to have a much longer read-write lifetime, for example: > Has anyone else out there been brave enough to go rw on their CF > cards? Results? Yes, Henning has covered this before, and I figured I'd just run the card RW and see. Again, no problems. I have a big stack of CF cards so when one dies I'm not totally up the creek... CK -- GDB has a 'break' feature; why doesn't it have 'fix' too?
Re: OT: Compact Flash Longevity; was Re: dd image file to compact flash takes very long
> Of course, I don't know if that's a legitimately more durable CF > card, or just marketing. > > Has anyone else out there been brave enough to go rw on their CF > cards? Results? Henning has covered the lifespan of these things several times on [EMAIL PROTECTED] Benny -- "Young lady, I yelled at you because that paperwork looked like it had been done by a drunk four-year-old." -- Dr. Bob Kelso, "Scrubs"
OT: Compact Flash Longevity; was Re: dd image file to compact flash takes very long
On Mon, Nov 07, 2005 at 01:00:18PM -0700, Chris Kuethe wrote: > On the subject of logging to CF, I'm now running my CF cards rw, > and using them like a normal disk. I've been doing this for at > least 6 months now, and I'll post something when I start seeing > failures. Are you using "regular" CF cards? What is the role of the system for which you did this (i.e. does a lot of writing occur)? FYI, you can buy "industrial" compact flash cards which are supposed to have a much longer read-write lifetime, for example: http://www.logicsupply.com/product_info.php/cPath/44/products_id/334 Of course, I don't know if that's a legitimately more durable CF card, or just marketing. Has anyone else out there been brave enough to go rw on their CF cards? Results? CF cards are so small and cheap (not to mention using very little power and produce very little heat), it would be cool if you could just plug two or three in there, only actually using one at a time. If one started having problems, just go to the next (automatic failover). Hardware that did that automatically would be REALLY nice, but I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to do in software. Matt -- Matt Garman email at: http://raw-sewage.net/index.php?file=email
Re: Re : Re: dd image file to compact flash takes very long
On 07/11/05, Didier Wiroth <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > For curiosity, which size do your compactflash card have that you use on your > embedded devices? 256M. You can fit bsd+base+etc+man into 128M if you delete some stuff, but as it's getting difficult and expensive to find things smaller than 256M, you may as well go with the the quarter gig. Also, you have room for logs that way. On the subject of logging to CF, I'm now running my CF cards rw, and using them like a normal disk. I've been doing this for at least 6 months now, and I'll post something when I start seeing failures. CK -- GDB has a 'break' feature; why doesn't it have 'fix' too?
Re : Re: Re : Re: dd image file to compact flash takes very long
hi, With a blocksize of 2048, it took 10 minutes now, far better ... :-)) - Message d'origine - De: knitti <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Lundi, Novembre 7, 2005 8:07 pm Objet: Re: Re : Re: dd image file to compact flash takes very long > On 11/7/05, Didier Wiroth <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > For curiosity, which size do your compactflash card have that you > use on your embedded devices? > > 256mb is very practical: a standard install is around half of it, > so I've > got plenty of space left for whatever. but i also won't get any > smallersizes for a reasonable price. > > > [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/octet- > stream which had a name of dmesg.boot] > bad luck. try posting your dmesg inline ;) > > > --knitti
Re: dd image file to compact flash takes very long
Last time I did this, I used the block device, rather than the character device. Also, I think I used 2KB blocks, instead of 512B. And then I found it was much faster to build a proper filesystem on the CF, mount it, populate it with tar/cpio/restore and then do the installboot. CF isn't noted for it's blazing speeds, but have a look at your dmesg to see what it says about the CF card. PIO ___, ___ sector transfers. Some of my faster CF cards can do 2 or 4 sector transfers. CK On 07/11/05, Didier Wiroth <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hello, > > I've build an image file with opensoekris for 256 mb sandisk compactflash. > The writing of the image file takes very long (102188 bytes/sec), see the > output below (I interupted it after 20 minutes). > > How long should it normally take to write a 256mb to a compactflash card? > For me it takes about 42 minutes, is that normal? > > Thanks for helping! > Didier > > dd if=38c.2005-11-07-16.22.bin of=/dev/rsd1c bs=512 > 238985+0 records in > 238984+0 records out > 122359808 bytes transferred in 1197.395 secs (102188 bytes/sec) > 1197.55 real 0.27 user 4.53 sys > > > fdisk: sysctl(machdep.bios.diskinfo): Device not configured > Disk: sd1 geometry: 245/64/32 [501760 Sectors] > Offset: 0 Signature: 0xAA55 > Starting Ending LBA Info: > #: idC H S -C H S [ start: size ] > > 0: 000 0 0 -0 0 0 [ 0: 0 ] unused > 1: 000 0 0 -0 0 0 [ 0: 0 ] unused > 2: 000 0 0 -0 0 0 [ 0: 0 ] unused > *3: A60 1 1 - 244 63 32 [ 32: 501728 ] OpenBSD > > Here is disklabel output: > # Inside MBR partition 3: type A6 start 32 size 501728 > # /dev/rsd1c: > type: SCSI > disk: vnd device > label: fictitious > flags: > bytes/sector: 512 > sectors/track: 32 > tracks/cylinder: 64 > sectors/cylinder: 2048 > cylinders: 245 > total sectors: 501760 > rpm: 3600 > interleave: 1 > trackskew: 0 > cylinderskew: 0 > headswitch: 0 # microseconds > track-to-track seek: 0 # microseconds > drivedata: 0 > > 16 partitions: > # sizeoffset fstype [fsize bsize cpg] > c:501760 0 unused 0 0 # Cyl 0 - 244 > > -- GDB has a 'break' feature; why doesn't it have 'fix' too?
Re : Re: dd image file to compact flash takes very long
Sorry I forgot to post my dmesg ;-((, here it is. For curiosity, which size do your compactflash card have that you use on your embedded devices? regards didier [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/octet-stream which had a name of dmesg.boot]
Re: dd image file to compact flash takes very long
On 11/7/05, Didier Wiroth <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hello, > > I've build an image file with opensoekris for 256 mb sandisk compactflash. > The writing of the image file takes very long (102188 bytes/sec), see the > output below (I interupted it after 20 minutes). > > How long should it normally take to write a 256mb to a compactflash card? > For me it takes about 42 minutes, is that normal? the last time i wrote to cf (sandisk 256 mb) was when I installed 3.7 to a soekris (didn't dd an image, did a direct install via PXE). It was (subjectively) much quicker, the whole install (including typing) was about 20 mins. The whole install (base, etc, misc+ python) consumed about 130 mb. otoh, on a soekris the cf card is wd0, not sd*, so it may depend on your hardware, driver, etc. If you feel like someone should tell you more about this, give at least a dmesg, so people can see what you talk about. --knitti
Re: dd image file to compact flash takes very long
--On 07 November 2005 17:14 +0100, Didier Wiroth wrote: I've build an image file with opensoekris for 256 mb sandisk compactflash. The writing of the image file takes very long (102188 bytes/sec), see the output below (I interupted it after 20 minutes). Give dd a larger blocksize. CF works in blocks of usually 16KB(128Kbit) - I think you need the card's datasheet to tell what this is, unless you test it empirically (e.g. dd with different size blocks and see when it reaches it's best transfer rate). If you only send the card 512 byte blocks at a time, afaik the card has to erase, copy previous contents and append 512 bytes, repeatedly until each 'card-block' is full. Doing this kills performance, and won't help the life of your card (though they last pretty well anyway). How long should it normally take to write a 256mb to a compactflash card? For me it takes about 42 minutes, is that normal? It depends on the particular CF card, and the speed between the adapter and PC (e.g. USB2 or not). But the erase-write-read cycle of a too-small block size will almost certainly hide this.
