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List:       gentoo-embedded
Subject:    Re: [gentoo-embedded] flash card booting
From:       Yuri Vasilevski <yuri () ciencias ! unam ! mx>
Date:       2005-09-30 14:55:28
Message-ID: 20050930095528.6a1fb03f () dune ! math ! cinvestav ! mx
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Hi,

On Fri, 30 Sep 2005 10:06:04 -0400
"David F. Newman" <dnewman@maraudingpirates.org> wrote:

> The CPU module has a 2M flash chip that currently boots DOS.  I also 
> have a PCMCIA PC/104 module that has a bios for booting off cards 
> and a 24M flash card from an old Cisco Catalyst switch.
> 
> Does anyone know if the Cisco Flash card can be used to boot a linux 
> OS or should I abandon that and look for something like a PCMCIA 
> hard drive?  I am attempting to keep everything solid state.

In theory you should be able to boot from it putting the kernel into
your 2M flash chip, and mounting root from your Cisco flash card.
(You may also need an initrd on 2M flash to initialize PCMCIA, I'm not
sure about it.)

> I have a gentoo laptop which I am using to try and format the Cisco 
> flash card using the pcmciamtd driver.  It seems to recognize the
> card but mke2fs just hangs on it.

The problem is that ext2 expects a block device while MTDs are
character devices, so you should try using jffs2 if you want to have rw
access or cramfs for ro. And you'll get some bonus space because of
compression used in this file systems.

Yuri.

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