Baslinux mailing list

[sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>]

> Maybe it would be easier. Give it a try and see. Right: if you have the
> necessary USB modules compiled into the kernel, there's no need for an
> initrd, I guess.

Maybe this weekend.  I would start a fresh BL3.40 loop, add netpbm or part 
of it (do we want to print from the camera?)  and copy it via the 1-floppy 
2.4.31 rather than install-to-hd, to as small a partition as possible 
(less than 20MB) on the memory card.  Then replace the 2.2.26 modules with 
any wanted 2.4.31 modules (slhc, ppp*?).

> > on larger ones without a swap file (and is slow).  Would linux run as fast
> > from a camera/CF card as from hard drive?  Faster?
>
> Depends on the USB. 1.0 wouldn't, but the newer 2.0 would run about as
> fast as a HD (480mb/s, I think). Isn't that about as fast as data
> transfers over the IDE channel?

We have USB 1.0

12 MBits/sec, or 1.5 Mbytes/sec, which is 7 of our largest photos.  We 
could read a 20MByte BL3 into RAM in maybe 15 seconds.


> > You don't need a 'rw'?
>
> I didn't use it, but again, this is DSL. Might be needed for BL.
>
> > It will wear out the CF card, you mean?
>
> That's what they say on the DSL forums. David seems to think otherwise,
> though.
>
> James

It can't be a lot harder on the card than using it to take pictures with.

If we boot from a FD with the kernel, how much disk space would be needed 
for a minimal BL3 without modules?

Another idea:  We have a 4MB CF card and a reader onto which we could also 
just put netpbm in some directory that we put onto the path.

PATH="$PATH:/netpbm"

(I could try to add it to /etc/profile but don't know how to modify 
David's syslinux setup.)

This would expand the 1-floppy BL.  Then we could plug the camera into the 
other USB port and edit images using netpbm on the 4MB card in the card 
reader.  We could not use any modules that the kernel was not compiled to 
support, of course.