INTRODUCTION:

Flash-based systems are appearing at a fast pace. This wiki presents *one way" to employ flash drives in an archlinux based “LIVE” arrangement.

It is important to note that the system must operate from “IDE” in order that the flash drives utilized are recognized as “TRUE IDE” devices thus permitting full “UDMA” operability. Operation is limited to UDMA 2 mode if "IDE" system operation is not enabled, reducing the performance of the flash drive-IDE interface.

In addition, an adapter having “UDMA READY” must be used to interface the Compact Flash (CF) to the IDE 80-wire interface cable. The CF card(s) must also be “UDMA” rated. This permits full UDMA capability.

The system herein described has no HDD's and can be described as “DISCLESS”.

Two CF/IDE interfaces are utilized. When employing CF/IDE adapters, only one such device is usable on a given IDE 80-wire cable at a time. A “slave” device can be provided on the adapter but it cannot be connected simultaneously with a “master” CF card on the same cable.

The present 2.6 kernels include provisions which eliminate the application of 80-wire cable parameters to IDE buses such that normal boots using standard kernels prevent “TRUE IDE” operation of the CFcard(s).....thus, the operations are limited to UDMA 2 mode even if the UDMA RATING is much higher.

Therefore, the requirement for “IDE” operation of the system is imperative for maximum performance and applies to the remainder of this “DISCLESS SYSTEM”description.

SYSTEM DETAILS:

Both the the primary and secondary IDE buses are utilized. The primary bus IDE cable has the“boot” CF card and the secondary bus IDE cable has a cachedir CF card, each having an adapter and connected via normal 80-wire cable.

The operation of these adapters is powered by the 4-pin power connector of the type provided to power the floppy disk peripheral device.

Some of the detailed results of performance outlined in this wiki apply to my system and its capabilities with respect to speed and versatility. (1600mhz cpu and 3GB ram).

The system being described is arch-linux based, with larch “Live” system elements and Faunos elements added. It utilizes pacman and aufs for its basic operational utility.

SYSTEM PHILOSOPHY:

Operate as much as possible in ram.

The primary CF card contains the boot Faunos system. It is squashfs compressed and has ~600 archlinux packages,includes pacman,aufs and PacTrac capability. It executes in ram as a r/o source.

The secondary CF card is used as a local cachedir to archive any and all upgrades to the operating system. As such it enables storage of downloaded packages for use at users discretion. When loaded into the system via pacman/aufs,the packages are decompressed into ram and operate therein, entirely in ram.

Downloading packages into the cachedir permits the storage of several versions of a given package...the original package is NOT OVERWRITTEN, thus flash device life is unaffected. Also,the user can revert back to a previous version and it will be INSTALLED INTO RAM.!