On Sat January 5 2008 18:36, Ed W wrote: > > > I do something very similar in my alpine linux distro. Instead of just > > continuing in initramfs, the init script mounts a tmpfs, finds a base > > installation (2-3MB) and "switch_root" to the tmpfs. From here it loads > > a set of packages (from usb/cdrom/cf) and configuration (from > > usb/floppy/cf). > > > > >From this base installation it is possible to mount disks, raid, iscsi, > > lvm and fire up vserver guests. > > > > > Hi Natanael > > I have followed your posts in gentoo-embedded mailing list. I have only > examined alpine-linux a little, but I'm not quite sure why you use the > tmpfs rather than say keeping with the initramfs and perhaps using aufs > to overwrite with additional packages, and perhaps even adding a > writeable /etc directory? (Actually on the wrt linksys distros they > often add a writable partition with symlinks into /etc, or vice-versa) > > Having only an initramfs seems like a very sensible solution for > Michael? He could use a second partition for writable stuff and mount > it rw - then simply symlink in anything required from the static > partition to give a kind of updatable /etc/ (or whatever) > > I'm researching something similar myself, but in my case I want quite a > lot of stuff in the base distro (30-60MB perhaps) and so your tmpfs > approach seems like quite a waste when I only have 128 or 256MB or ram > on the devices I want to use...? > The system I am targeting is unusual for an embedded system in the amount of ram. Stock is 0.5Gb user expandable to 2.0Gb. There is a lot of information on the web about people trying to trim down a desktop or full-sized laptop distro for this machine. I am trying the other approach - start with what I would use for an embedded system - let natural growth and feature creep claim the additional resources. I am including auFS in the build. auFS includes patches for L-Vs. Also squashfs+lzma compression probably for /lib/modules/<version>/ maybe for other parts of the tree. Haven't checked that yet for L-Vs support. The builds I am making are using initial ramFS (which is r/w) not initrd (which is r/o) - so finding a place for writable areas is not a concern. Mike > Anyone else got any other thoughts on this? > > Cheers > > Ed W > >