Project: Linux on solid state flash laptop

15-3-08

I want to create a new linux project. The laptop have a solit state flash drive with only 128mb ram.

The following must run:
– Debian\Ubuntu as main OS
– Xwindow manager (Flux box, Enlightenment, ICEWM or XFCE)
– PPTP VPN connections
– Remote desktop program for Windows RDP

The main problem of solid state flash is that you can write the disk not forever. So the log & temporary files must be run in the RAM. I found the following solution:

/etc/fstab

tmp     /tmp            tmpfs   noexec,nosuid,rw,size=1024K     0       0
vartmp  /var/tmp        tmpfs   noexec,nosuid,rw,size=1024K     0       0
varlog  /var/log        tmpfs   noexec,nosuid,rw,size=2048K     0       0

17-03-08:

My Distro choice is DSL (damn small linux) because that is a very small distro including window manager.

The first big problem is that i have only a 64mb SSD disk. I must create 57mb for my “fragile” installation. A have 7 MB for my home & swap. I’ll have try it without swap but DSL was very unstable on my laptop.

18-03-08

I found a solution (DSL Create own CD(PDF)) to create a my own installation CD. When I re-mastering the distro I can add items. But soon I’ll try this manner to strip the distribution to a smaller one 🙂

19-03-08

When I remastered the DS, I seen one big KNOPPIX file. Now I must rebuild te KNOPPIX enviroment instead of the DSL. The KNOPPIX file is like a ISO. I must mount the file before i can edit these.

I found the following steps on the internet:


Uncompress the DSL-N *.iso and ‘unpack” the knoppix image

# mkdir /ramdisk/image
# mount /path-to-file/dsl-n-01RC4.iso /ramdisk/image -t iso9660 -o loop,ro
# mkdir /ramdisk/unpack
# mount /ramdisk/image/KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX /ramdisk/unpack -t iso9660 -o ro,loop=/dev/cloop50

Prepare a place to put the files for the re-mastered knoppix image

# mkdir /ramdisk/source
# mkdir /ramdisk/newcd
# mkdir /ramdisk/newcd/KNOPPIX
# cp -Rp /ramdisk/unpack/* /ramdisk/source
# cp -Rp /ramdisk/unpack/.bash_profile /ramdisk/source

Copy additional files to be added to the new knoppix image

# cp /path-to-file/file /ramdisk/source/path-to-file/file
# etc etc

“Pack” the new knoppix image

# mkisofs -R /ramdisk/source | create_compressed_fs – 65536 > ramdisk/newcd/KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX


I’ll try the mount and this works 🙂 So now I must find the big files and strip these. My following step is find a tool like KDirStat to find these files.

Author: Thomas Faddegon

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