Moving to SD... again.

[bluey]

Copied the libncurses file from /usr/lib to /lib and recopied it to the name of the libncurses link on /usr/lib. Everything is working  - nice one Bluey, you here of the Zaurus nation !

I almost miss all of those link errors when installing stuff  -NOT  :-D

I\'m glad I could help!

Maybe I\'m feelin\' it wrong, but it seems applications start faster with this partition scheme, than with just one partition mounted as /opt and /usr linked to it, which was my previous setup.


See you later!  :wink:

[Anonymous]

When you originally set up the partions, how did you divide up the card?  50-50 for both /usr and /opt?  Should /usr get a larger share of the partition, or do the app installations fill up /opt quicker?  I have a 128 meg SD card that I am looking to carve up.

[bluey]

I believe that most apps get installed to the /opt/QtPalmtop which is similar to /usr, but some things still go to /usr, mostly libs.

I did 50/50, but with a 128Mb card, maybe you should try to see the usage you\'d get. Maybe a 50/50 for start, install all the apps you need right now, and if needed reajust the partitions.

My occupation is of 75Mb in /opt and 34Mb in /usr.

(But /opt has also /home, and must have a couple of video files, which I don\'t recall their size, but they are small)


Have a wonderful day!

[Anonymous]

Thanks Bluey.  I\'m going to try making a 48MB partition for /usr, and leave the rest for opt, home, and root.  I like the idea of having /usr, with all of those links buried in there, in a separate partition.  That may be a reson why you see some performance gains.  

I\'ll see how 48MB works out after a week or so and let you all know.  Unfortunately I messed up some filesystem moves this morning, and I need to reflash my machine again.  If you use the lcd, is it still a typo, or a tap-o?  

[khim]

Ok. I admit I do not yet have Zaurus, I\'m only thinking about it. But still...

Why do you feel any need to split you card at all To avoid symlinks ? I do it with bind option on my server system.

Here is /etc/fstab :
...
/dev/md3                                /mnt/RAID-A     reiserfs        defaults,usrquota,grpquota      1       1
/dev/md4                                /mnt/RAID-B     reiserfs        defaults,usrquota,grpquota      1       1
/dev/md5                                /mnt/RAID-C     reiserfs        defaults,usrquota,grpquota      1       1
/mnt/RAID-A/home                        /home           -               bind            0       0
/mnt/RAID-C/systems                     /var/systems    -               bind            0       0
/mnt/RAID-A/ftp                         /var/lib/ftp    -               bind            0       0
/mnt/RAID-C/www                         /var/www        -               bind            0       0
/mnt/RAID-B/squid-cache                 /var/cache/squid        -       bind            0       0
...

/home and /var/ftp are directories as some programs like but both are in fact from /dev/md3 ... This way I can move any part of system to any RAID and still programs will not be confused (if you\'ll simplink /home to /mnt/RAID-A/home then /home/.. will not be equal to / and this confuses some scripts but when bind mount is used everythin works as expected). Why it does not work on Z ? Why play with symplinks or split puny card in half when bind mount can solve all problems ? What I\'m missing here ?

[Anonymous]

Perhaps that mount option could be unknown, until know...

I\'d rather read \"you can you use this xpto option, it works without the need for that kind of kung-foo\" than that \"why don\'t you use that option? are you ignorant?\"...

I\'ll try it in the Z to see if it works, I believe it should...

Thanks.

[Anonymous]

It works.

[khim]

Perhaps that mount option could be unknown, until know...

I\'d rather read \"you can you use this xpto option, it works without the need for that kind of kung-foo\" than that \"why don\'t you use that option? are you ignorant?\"...

Oops. Sorry if I offended someone. It\'s well-known feature of Linux kernel 2.4.x (Al Viro was really proud three years ago when he finally was able to make it work) and it\'s documented (it\'s used to pull parts of devfs, procfs or just any partition trees in chroot jail, for example), it\'s not some undocumented trick so I just assumed it was tried and rejected. Why was it rejected ? I was confused: I never had any problem with bind mounts for last few years but I\'ve read a lot about \"symlink horrors\" on Z so I assumed something prevent you from bind mount on Z...

[braindrop]

just want to say thanks for the scripts, so far its working good.

not that any improvemwnts with the scripts are needed but if they were it would be kinda nice to start the script from the point of someone just popping in there sd card for the first time. i.e. have the fdisk part in there and each person just chooses the size of the partition. and maybe put that whole last part with the libncurses deal in the script as well

oh, and I am pretty new, is there a way to have root reflect the size correctly? i have a 256 sd but when i install to root it only shows 9660. or am i doing something dumb?

anyway thanks, i really like this setup so far.

[braindrop]

one thing i have noticed is longer load times for the apps on the sd, figured this is probably normal but wanted to ask to make sure.  an example time: opera 6 takes on average about 6-8 seconds for the window frame to pop up and about another 15 sec for the black to go away before it loads the page.
i never timed it before but i noticed a definite increase here.

[bluey]

SD access is rather slow, so it is normal that the load times increase. You\'ll notice that with the volume applet, which writes the current value to disk with a large frequency, which isn\'t noticed when you have have the conf files on the Z instead of on the SD, and it gets very slow while changing the volume.

The root size is what /dev/root has free, and not the SD card, that is why you see that value.

I\'ve been testing with the binds instead of breaking the card in two partitions. It works ok too, at least it seems so, I\'ve been without time to extend my testing.

I\'ll try to modify the script to use bind and that way it\'ll do everything or you, and no fdisk will be necessary.

I want pack the scripts on an ipk and make in run with opie-sh. One for creating everything, and another for recovering in case of some problem. When I do it, I\'ll post the ipk. Feel free to add and improve whatever you feel it should.


Greetings!

[catachresis]

Thanks bluey for your contributions!

[Mahoro]

Arr..... are those for multi-parition..??
I am doing @ it, but I have no idea what you guys talking...I am an n00b..

[javamatte]

Looks like I caught this thread very late, but are there any updates, Bluey?

I should be receiving my Zaurus (SL-5500) early next week, and this sounds like EXCACTLY what I want to do with it.  I've got a 256M SD card, and I'd like to use all the SRAM for heap space, instead of file storage.

I'm a little worried about the earlier problems w/ libncurses and bash because I'm a Linux newbie.  I only know enough to be very dangerous

Let me know if you have a pretty good script to mount the whole card (using the bind mounts) and xfer the /usr and /opt dirs to the SD.

In regards to the slow performance of the SD cards, are you binding with sync or async?  I've heard that sync makes it slow, and since you aren't ejecting the card, maybe async would help?  I'm not sure of all the implications of doing this, though, so don't try it out just because I said so!

Thanks,
-javamatte

[RickG03]

I would like to use these scripts to run /usr and /opt off a 256MB SD card. Reading through the posts, it seems that libncurses needs to be copied from /usr/lib to /lib. However, I don't have libncurses in /usr/lib and it does not appear to be available from the OZ feeds. Where can I get this library? Will a copy from another linux system work?

Thanks.

-Rick