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Re: Microdrive on PCM-5822

From: Doug Sutherland <>
Date: Sat, 2 Dec 2000 08:27:06 -0800

Eric Laforest typeth:

>> with no swap partition and a bare bones linux runtime
> Good.  But in the interest of system stability should memory become
> scarce, I would reccommend a small swap file.

Thanks for that tip. I was worried about falling off the 
edge of the earth I mean RAM limitations ...

[installing packages on slackware w/o rpm package manager]
> ../configure <options you want/need>
> make install
<snip>
> ...but this requires a compiler....

Yes, and herein lies another one of those tradeoffs. The C libraries
for linux are huge! I initially wanted to have the compiler and all 
of the necessary libs to intall packages, but it will consume almost 
as much disk space as my whole OS runtime environment!

Here's what I'm thinking. First of all I don't want to be tweaking 
the OS on a daily basis, I want a core set of functions working, 
and once they are working I want to leave them alone. Also, most 
of my development will be on Java (not C/C++) or microcontrollers 
so I don't need all of the GNU C/C++ libs most of the time. 

I think I have a good system for this though, and the PCMCIA adapter
that comes with the IBM microdrive helps. What I will do is always 
have a full blown slackware distribution installed on my laptop 
drive. Most of the time the laptop drive won't be attached, but if 
I need to compile a new kernel or install new packages, I remove  
the microdrive from the CF socket, boot from the large distro on 
the laptop drive, then mount the microdrive in the PCMCIA slot.

Any and all system compiling will be done on the laptop drive, and 
only the binary executables and support libs will be copied onto 
the the microdrive. This leaves me with a very small runtime OS on 
the microdrive, yet I still have all of my dev tools, which are 
primarily trusty ole VI, shell scripts, javac, and make tools. 
This also makes for a really easy way to back up my entire system 
from the microdrive to the laptop drive.

  -- Doug 

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