From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Nov 3 12:55:41 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E35E316A4CE for ; Wed, 3 Nov 2004 12:55:41 +0000 (GMT) Received: from pi.codefab.com (pi.codefab.com [199.103.21.227]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 96C1D43D49 for ; Wed, 3 Nov 2004 12:55:41 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from cswiger@mac.com) Received: from [192.168.1.3] (pool-68-161-115-118.ny325.east.verizon.net [68.161.115.118]) by pi.codefab.com (8.12.11/8.12.11) with ESMTP id iA3CtWI2030409 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO); Wed, 3 Nov 2004 07:55:34 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <4188D543.3020501@mac.com> Date: Wed, 03 Nov 2004 07:55:31 -0500 From: Chuck Swiger Organization: The Courts of Chaos User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040910 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: FreeBSD References: In-Reply-To: X-Enigmail-Version: 0.86.1.0 X-Enigmail-Supports: pgp-inline, pgp-mime Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Spam-Status: No, hits=-4.1 required=5.5 tests=AWL,BAYES_00 autolearn=ham version=2.64 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 2.64 (2004-01-11) on pi.codefab.com Subject: Re: USB Key Disk Boot X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 03 Nov 2004 12:55:42 -0000 joe mcguckin wrote: [ ...top-posting recovered... ] > Most USB keys don't have a rw/ro switch. Is there a kernel flag you can set > to tell FreeBSD that boot device is flash and that writes should be kept to > a minimum? Look at /etc/fstab, and consider the "ro" & "noatime" options. > Can swap space be completely done away with? Certainly. It would be a very good idea to configure the system with more than enough physical RAM, and to take some care selecting the software being run on the system. [ If you stick to small, simple C programs like natd, dhcpd, etc, you should be fine. Try to avoid complex systems and scripting languages like Perl-- for example, trying to do SMTP + SpamAssassin + amavis + antivirus on a Compact Flash-based host would be a bad idea. ] -- -Chuck