On Thu, 29 Nov 2007 19:24:38 -0500 (EST), Jed Clear wrote: >On Thu, 29 Nov 2007, ervin wrote: >> I'm pxe booting ubuntu dapper 6.06 to a Soekris 4501 (64MB RAM & 1GB >> Compact Flash card) ... dhcp, tftp and the server install is running >> smoothly until I want to write the partitioning to the CF card .... >> >> I tried guided and manual partitioning .... same issue, which is: >> ---------------------------- issue >> ------------------------------------------------- >> The attempt to mount a file system with type swap in IDE1 master, | >> | partition #5 (hda5) at none failed. >> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- >> I made tests on different CF card 1GB & 4GB and from both Sandisk & >> IBM ... no difference. >> >> My manual partitions: >> >> 200 MB / >> 100 MB swap >> 350 MB /usr >> 350 MB /var > >I'm a BSD person, so I won't speculate on exactly what's going on, but it >seems like this is protecting you from your own folly. Swap is the last >thing you want on a flash disk. Flash has a limited number of writes >before it degrades. ISTR that the spec for write cycles in in the >100s of thousands, which is fine for a digital camera, but a swap >partition will chew through that in no time.
I'm a BSD person too (and a retired IBM Linux instructor) and I'm getting sick of the meme that seems to be eternal, that CF is easily worn out. I ran OpenBSD on a reasonably busy firewall for over a year. It had the most verbose logging I could enable and ran the spamd proxy (NOT the SA thing) with a large list of tarpit addresses. I eventually tired of checking spam logs there and moved spamd function to the mailserver so I can do some scripty things from the spamdb. I put a very small swap on CF for those tests (~10MB) just to shut up OpenBSD's whining about no swap. Later versions don't complain. The point is though that you should not be seeing swap used on appliances, so it shouldn't be wearing anything out, even if wear was a problem. > >Suggest you find a HOWTO specifically for a flash filesystem, which you >will probably find has no swap at all. If you really need to have virtual >memory for your application, you could consider a CF format microdrive, or >an IDE laptop drive. A complete waste of time and very confusing for beginners. I have a Soekris 4801 running at a very large funds management outfit. It does huge numbers of IPsec connections and plenty of regular traffic. It is installed with a 1GB CF running OpenBSD and we treat it as a HDD. Just to be sure we will bin the CF when we do the next upgrade EOFY (30/6/08) If flash was as bad as all these old tales make out you would not be seeing SSHD using nand flash appearing in top of the line laptops already. The reason CF is good now but olde worlde flash wasn't is partly due to wearlevelling which maps out bad bits and has plenty of spares. That and improved cell tech. Now, we still have not solved the OP's problem and I don't think the CF is acting as a conscience or being paternalistic. BR/ Rod/ /earth: write failed, file system is full cp: /earth/creatures: No space left on device _______________________________________________ Soekris-tech mailing list Soekris-tech@lists.soekris.com http://lists.soekris.com/mailman/listinfo/soekris-tech
