Re: No Moving parts boot devices

[Chuck Yerkes <chuck+obsd_(_at_)_2003_(_dot_)_snew_(_dot_)_com>]

Quoting Jim (jameso_(_at_)_elwood_(_dot_)_net):
> I have been looking into the build out of a no moving parts system,
> and wanted to pick a few people's minds of what there past experience
> has been with various media.

Several ways to do it, been done by several people
(said chuck glancing at his cf-booting Soekris).

I've written up file system stuff for readonly disks
for embsd and the soerkis-tech list.

Note:
CF is slow.  Slower than disk.  But once running, most
stuff you actually use ends up in RAM (bind, dhcp, routed,
etc).

CF doesn't want to be written to - no swap, generally rw partitions
are bad.

Re: pen drives.
If you can get a box to boot from one, then great.  I'd love to
know how.  I don't use a lot of x86 OpenBSD and the one I have
is decrepit and slow with no USB.

> >From what I have seen, there are USB Pen drives
> (http://www.pendrive.com/intro.php), CompactFlash to IDE
> converters (http://store.ituner.com/ituner/micoflidead.html), Various
> media adapters some of which are pretty nice looking
> (http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?sku=C250-2158).
> 
> Is anyone willing to share some experiences with some of these types
> of tools when it comes to booting OpenBSD? The multi-adapter devices
> look pretty tempting, but before dropping money I would like to see
> what people's experience with them have been. Would it just be safer
> going to a CF-IDE adapter?

CF-PCI cards generally should cost you around $18.  CF cards, not much more.

> The end result I am looking for is a way to boot OBSD with out having
> to have any moving parts in the system. 

Why?  To what end?  What is your goal?


> Second to that, it would be
> cool to have a system on a Pen Drive that I could boot up any machine
> I walk up to and have access to various utils (tftp, nmap, ssh, etc)
> where I could make a untrusted machine "mine" with just a reboot for a
> period of time.

I use an iPod for that :)