[clug] CF/IDE/Linux

[Antony Wuth]

On Tue, 22 Jun 2004 10:33:13 +1000, Barndon, Daron
<daron.barndon at volante.com.au> wrote:
> Has anyone had any experience with using CompactFlash cards (as a drive via
> IDE adapter) and linux?

My router/firewall is currently running a CF card. My Original reason
was to reduce the risk of awful disk crashes interrupting my life &
generally being annoying.

Basically I ended up with the CF partitions mounted ro, if I want to
edit a config file I remount the disk rw, edit the config & then
re-mount read only. As a bonus I now keep a separate copy of the disk
image on a separate server that I can re-write to the system in the
event that the CF decides to kill it's self.

Other things I have done to make this all a little more fault tolerant are:
Anything that needs writing to is written to a ram based filesystem -
on bootup I create a new filesystem & un-tar a 'starter' filesystem in
place (/tmp, /var for examples)
The console in re-directed to a serial port that I patch over cat-5
cable to somewhere that isn't under the stairs (as I hit my head more
than once putting it all in) both liko & the kernel can use a serial
port meaning I can (almost) fully control the box from somewhere much
warmer & more comfy.
syslog messages currently goes to the ram filesystem and too a network
syslog server, once I have the time (and inclination) I intend to have
the syslog go over a serial link (for security & reliability)

Hope this helps.

Antony