[CALUG] Loading DSL onto Compact Flash.

[Jason Dixon]

On Aug 18, 2006, at 11:35 AM, Hugh Brown wrote:

> On 8/17/06, Jason Dixon <jason at dixongroup.net> wrote: On Aug 17,  
> 2006, at 2:27 PM, Peter Alexander wrote:
>
> > Hello,
> >   I have been trying to configure a system that uses an SBC with an
> > on-board CompactFlash card reader. I have been able to load
> > Damn Small Linux (DSL) onto it but have not been able to get it to
> > boot.
> > Right now I've been using the Live-CD, to make
> > configuration changes, but ultimately I would like to use a boot
> > floppy
> > and USB ThumbDrive to load linux onto the CF.
> >
> > I was able to find instructions on how to load Slackware onto a CF,
> > but
> > it has not been very useful since I'm trying to use DSL.
>
> You mean Linux won't just see the CF as an IDE drive?  I can fit an
> entire OpenBSD installation in <180MB of space.  I just install from
> the CDROM and it sees the CF just like any other drive.  If I want to
> avoid writes to CF (not really necessary these days), I just mount a
> MFS partition.
>
> We tried this at a former job (installing linux onto a cf card  
> which was in an ide-cf adapter) and it nuked the cf card because of  
> all the reads and writes.
>
> I did get a pared down knoppix to load onto cf but I had to alter  
> some files in the minitroot.gz so that it had appropriate drivers  
> (that may only have been for the usb drive though) and so that it  
> thought of the cf as the cdrom drive.  I'll see if I can find the  
> link that I worked from.  This was also all done with knoppix 3.4  
> (when it used syslinux instead of isolinux).
>
> I couldn't find the link (my data is three years old now though).   
> I believe DSL is/was based off knoppix to begin with.

The write issue with CFs has long since been fixed.  Nevertheless, it  
continues to rage on as a myth.

--
Jason Dixon
DixonGroup Consulting
http://www.dixongroup.net