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

 

On Mon, 17 Nov 2008, Neil Williams wrote:

> 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????

You're fighting a losing battle here.

I build "embedded" systems based on Linux that boot off a Flash IDE 
device. I started with 32MB units. These days the "sweet spot" is 256MB. 
Won't be long before it's double that.

> 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.

I use Lilo FWIW.

Gordon
-- 
www.drogon.net

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