From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Nov 1 00:55:27 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CB3B616A4D0 for ; Mon, 1 Nov 2004 00:55:27 +0000 (GMT) Received: from fw.farid-hajji.net (fw.farid-hajji.net [213.146.115.42]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0F7EB43D2D for ; Mon, 1 Nov 2004 00:55:26 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from cpghost@cordula.ws) Received: from bsdbox.farid-hajji.net (bsdbox [192.168.254.3]) by fw.farid-hajji.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id E50FF4B0C4; Mon, 1 Nov 2004 01:54:48 +0100 (CET) Date: Mon, 1 Nov 2004 01:57:04 +0100 From: cpghost@cordula.ws To: Luke Message-ID: <20041101005704.GA26910@bsdbox.farid-hajji.net> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.6i cc: Nikolas Britton cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Laptops as routers X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 01 Nov 2004 00:55:27 -0000 On Sun, Oct 31, 2004 at 01:54:33PM -0800, Luke wrote: > To go off on a bit of a tangent here, I find the idea of replacing hard > drives with flash memory intriguing. When I first heard someone talk > about doing this several years ago, the idea was quickly shot down by > people saying that flash memory has a very short lifetime when you write > to it. Even a system as minimal as a firewall will require frequent write > operations if it does any logging at all. > > Has this limitation been overcome in recent years? > Google isn't turning up any recent articles on this subject for me. No, the limited write cycles problem is still there, but not as bad as you might imagine. In most cases, all you need to do is to put /var and /tmp on a memory filesystem, and archive only compressed logs either to flash or to a remote server every now and then, thus greatly reducing the write access cycles to your flash card. But this is not always a useful solution (e.g. if you want to run an MTA like postfix which accesses the filesystem that holds the mail queues quite frequently). Sometimes, a 2.5" harddisk (I don't know about microdisks' durability) is your only recourse. Cheers, cpghost. -- Cordula's Web. http://www.cordula.ws/