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Re: [LUG] Source of cheap small capacity USB memory sticks

 

On Sat, 15 Nov 2008 18:16:03 +0000
"Steve Lee" <steve@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> why 'need'?
> Can't you just ignore the extra?

How can I promote a small distribution that is targetted at devices
that have less than 32Mb of total storage, by giving out 1Gb media????

Some devices will need the USB stick formatted with filesystems that
are only sane on small flash storage (and get incredibly wasteful over
128Mb) because the contents of the stick need to be addressable from
the bootloader. Many bootloaders have extremely limited opinions of
what kind of filesystems it can boot. VFAT isn't a safe choice either.

1Gb is only suitable as a multi-architecture installer but as each
installer is less than 25Mb and each may require different filesystems,
it probably isn't worth doing.

It just doesn't add up - except for the larger devices that can use
"normal" bootloaders like grub and which don't need this kind of
support in the first place.

-- 


Neil Williams
=============
http://www.data-freedom.org/
http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/
http://e-mail.is-not-s.ms/

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