Text 7981, 67 rader
Skriven 2006-11-14 19:04:18 av Maurice Kinal (1:140/13.1)
   Kommentar till text 7978 av James Bradley (1:134/77.0)
Ärende: ttylinux
================
Hey James!

Nov 14 10:09 06, James Bradley wrote to Maurice Kinal:

 JB> Just yesterday, as I Slack 11ed this machine, it offered to fstab the 
 JB> two USB 'drives' (I call them drives, if there's moving parts or 
 JB> not.) and they both had an asterisk in the boot column. There's no OS 
 JB> on either, but they look like they are both partitioned bootabale.

Right.  Like I said it doesn't matter if the bios sees these as bootable or not
and as long as the OS can use usb then these can be used as hotswappable drives
which is the main issue.  Actual bootablility is bonus.

 JB> Like I say, only my 64b patient is able to use a USB boot, so it's 
 JB> almost a non-issue here.

Understood.  It has been that way here for many, many years now but wrt pcmcia
and compactflash rather then usb.  It has only been withing the last year or so
that usb took over that job here and not only with flashdisks.

 JB> I just saw a USB->IDE "cable". This must be your device? Mine, was a 
 JB> stripped case.

Right.  No case.  I don't need the case as I am targetting other machines that
already have a bay(s) for it.  However I do have one external case but that is
for a 300G sata drive which we use for beefier stuff.  It can also handle a usb
connection but that is becoming redundant now, but it does work when needed
which can happen.

 JB> You must know it's for mission critical systems, and swaping in a 
 JB> good drive for a failed one on the RAID, should it occur.

A nonissue to me personally.  I do have a sata raid controller but it has yet
to see any action.  Mind you I had an ide raid controller before that saw no
action either so I have serious doubts the sata one will either.  It is there
if it ever needs to be.  I doubt it.

 JB> He might just get the Mac yet. I still have to bring it in from the 
 JB> cold.

I looked at what it would take to get a crosscompiler working for it and wasn't
impressed at the way that would require intalling and booting.  I'll stick to
x86-ish systems thank you very much.  Apple can keep all theirs.

 JB> ...Doesn't seem to be making many waves. I can boot to it from a DVD 
 JB> to RAM, but haven't found an easy path to make it work with any ease.

I haven't bothered.  What for?  Now that the DVD burner and rom are offsystem
it isn't likely I'll ever worry about it ever.  I prefer my method as it is far
more universal then floppies, CDs or DVDs can even dream about let alone do. 
They can keep them all.

 JB> Then I started thinking, size really does matter in the field. They 
 JB> likely would notice, if you needed any reliebility from it.

Exactly!!!  I found 16M to be more then ample so far, even for 64-bit.  I am
still putting the 'final' touches on the 64-bit development system which I plan
to put on a bootable usb pen drive (or whatever you want to call it) which
could be later mounted and chrooted into if I find the main boot ramdisk
lacking in any way which so far it isn't but what the heck eh?  It has more
then enough room for it.

Life is good,
Maurice

--- Msged/LNX 6.2.0
 * Origin: The Pointy Stick Society XXV - Almost there (1:140/13.1)