From owner-freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Jan 21 23:50:54 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5107916A4CE for ; Wed, 21 Jan 2004 23:50:54 -0800 (PST) Received: from phantom.keystreams.com (phantom.keystreams.com [207.158.28.3]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 3C2A043D41 for ; Wed, 21 Jan 2004 23:50:52 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from volfman@keystreams.com) Received: (qmail 71062 invoked from network); 22 Jan 2004 07:50:51 -0000 Received: from ts46-01-qdr1564.wvlle.ca.charter.com (HELO keystreams.com) (66.189.142.28) by mail.keystreams.com with SMTP; 22 Jan 2004 07:50:51 -0000 Message-ID: <400F814F.2070304@keystreams.com> Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 23:52:47 -0800 From: Roman Volf User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.4b) Gecko/20030507 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org References: <400C0BFF.5070507@pio.dk> <1074753830.1995.9.camel@work.gusalmighty.com> In-Reply-To: <1074753830.1995.9.camel@work.gusalmighty.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: FreeBSD router on a USB flash drive? X-BeenThere: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Internet Services Providers List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 07:50:54 -0000 The fewer moving parts in a router, the better. Flash drives have no moving parts and should have a lower probability of failure. Something you should look into, Christoffer, are pcmcia-to-ide and also CF-to-IDE adapters. You can get a cheaper Compact Flash card, plug it in, and the computer thinks that its a normal IDE HD. They cost about $40 for the adapters plus the price of the flash card. Roman Volf Justin Hopper wrote: >On Mon, 2004-01-19 at 08:55, Christoffer Pio wrote: > > >>Hello all, has anyone experience with booting from, and running a FreeBSD >>based router on a USB 2.0 flash drive? >> >> > >I'm really curious what brought you to the situation of needing to boot >from a flash drive for a router? =) > >I picked up a USB 2.0 flash drive (128MB) for transferring files around >between workstations and I really like its convenience. I formatted the >drive in FreeBSD 5.1 and installed the standard boot loader. It took me >a while to find a box with a new enough BIOS to be able to use the flash >drive as a boot option, but I finally found one and was able to get to >the boot loader. However, 128MB didn't seem to be enough space to do a >minimum install so I was not able to install 5.1 on it and boot from >it. I didn't have the time to try to see if I could trim down the >install further, so this was as far as I got. > >I assume with a larger flash drive it is completely possible. As to why >you would want to do it, I'm still not sure =) > > > -- Roman Volf Keystreams Internet Solutions (619) 572-2062