[CentOS] Centos 4.4 in a cf card + ramdisk

[John Summerfield]

Erick Perez wrote:
> I want to install centos 4.4 in a CF card and use a ram disk for
> operations. It means no hard disk attached to the computer. The
> machine will only run an antispam antivirus gateway.
> What documents can I read to make /var and /tmp sit on a ram disk and
> boot the operating system in read write and switch to read only after
> booting?

I have heard that there are read-write limitations that apply to some CF 
and similar implementations, and that the memory can "wear out" fairly 
quickly.

ipcop is designed to run from cf, I suggest you have a look at it. 
Whether you use it or not, it is likely to provide you with the 
education you need.

booting from a network can be a satisfactory alternative. You might need 
a boot floppy (or CD) to get enough intelligence to mount your root 
filesystem via NFS.

You could also contemplate booting & running from CD. Is there a 
CentOS-Live? If not, there is Fedora-Live, and you could also base from 
Knoppix (first, remove almost everything) or Damn Small Linux (Knoppix 
with almost everything removed, but some additions).

fwiw I recently installed Kubuntu 6.10 on a test system. It was fairly 
easy to create a separate root filesystem, and using PXE I can boot that 
on various systems and use it for emergency/repair/recovery/inspections 
in much the same way one would use Knoppix. Except I don't have to find 
the CD.



-- 

Cheers
John

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