On 15 Mar 2008, at 20:08, James wrote:
You shouldn't need to do anything special - just copy all files over
exactly, and then set up GRUB on the CF card.
Well, I've heard otherwise. Use jffs2 or the CF card will wear out
prematurely.......
I've "heard" lots about using flashdrives for filesystems, but I've
never read on a mailing list anything actually definitive on the
subject. I find many posts to be confused.
This comes up regularly on the mythtv-users list <http://tinyurl.com/
2z7s7h>, and conclusions are vague.
_As I understand it_, previous posters are right though - either use
a device with built in wear-levelling (and a file-system it's aware
of), OR use a wear-levelling filesystem. It's not clear what happens
if you use a wear-levelling filesystem on a device with built in wear-
levelling.
Anecdotally, "it won't work, your flash drive will die in no
time" (repeated often) and "we used these all the time in my last job
and never had one die on us" (IIRC the latter guy worked on till
systems, basically a PC with a touchscreen, and used SanDisk cards;
it's unclear how much writing was done to the drive).
Stroller's law: ask about using compact-flash camera memory in Linux
PC applications, and you will receive many anecdotal & hearsay replies.
Corollary: just try it. No-one else frikkin' is!
... When using 'fdisk'
to format the CF card: In section 4d of the handbook, I do not see
a 'mkjffs2fs' command.
$ eix -S jffs
* sys-fs/mtd
Available versions: 20040825 20050519
Homepage: http://sources.redhat.com/jffs2/
Description: JFFS2 is a log-structured file system
designed for use on flash devices in embedded systems.
$
if this doesn't provide the userspace tools, then the homepage prolly
does.
Stroller.
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