Arch Linux

judfilm

Member

Registered: 2004-02-12

Posts: 229

Compact Flash (CF) Installation

Hi,

Has anyone tried to install/run Arch on a CompactFlash Card?

Thanks

rayjgu3

Member

From: Chicago IL usa

Registered: 2004-07-04

Posts: 695

Re: Compact Flash (CF) Installation

got it going on a usb pen cant seem to get it to boot off any other pc other than the one it was installed on
its kinda tricky,,,  start the  ftp install hopefully it recognizes your flashcard as  /dev/discs/discX/partY  if so just go ahead & install to it with lilo as boot loader  i havent gotten grub to work
after install before reboot chroot to new install edit pacman.conf so you can pull kernel26.14 along with initrd  edit the mkinitrd.conf   tell it the modules you need to get card recognized  then run mkinitrd auto go into lilo.conf make nessasary changes  id recommend haveing at least 2 entries for arch oen with
initrd=/boot/initrd26.img   the other  with
initrd=/boot/initrd26-full.img  sometimes only one of these will boot its not always the full

hope you can make some sense of this
good luck let us know what you come up with

judfilm

Member

Registered: 2004-02-12

Posts: 229

Re: Compact Flash (CF) Installation

Thanks for the info.
Why doesn't grub work?
Was thinking of actually installing on a HDD first then transfering it over when everything is working.
Also I'd like to disable logging/unecessary writes to preseve the life of the card, any hints?

rayjgu3

Member

From: Chicago IL usa

Registered: 2004-07-04

Posts: 695

Re: Compact Flash (CF) Installation

well this is only a guess but i would say because it looks for the drive to boot kernel from which it would look for hdX  /boot/vmlinuz26 but cant find it cause theres nothing in grub telling it to look at usb drive where lilo to me it seems when you tell your pc to boot usb it has power to the drive long enough to  copy the initrd26.img to ram then the boot process begins so by the time it looks for anything from your externel drive initrd26.img already loaded it
i had a prob with a recent fresh install onto a usb drive the initrd26.img kept leaving me at busybox if youd like a copy of an initrd26.img that i have which is setup to boot sda1 ill email it to you just pm with your email addy
the file is 2.9MB
but if you have a scsi or sata drive in this machine it will look to boot off of them not you flash card since they would be recognized 1st so your flash card would be bumped to sdb which i dont have an initrd26 for

rayjgu3

Member

From: Chicago IL usa

Registered: 2004-07-04

Posts: 695

Re: Compact Flash (CF) Installation

Hi all,

I'm trying to install noodle onto a 1GB CF with an IDE interface. It appears as /dev/hda, but /arch/setup does not detect it, even when I hard-code the partitions into setup.

Anybody out there got any ideas?

Wombat installed very easily on this platform.

TIA

Darren

so install wombat then pacman -Syu
or do a net install from wombat you may have to change the servers in pacman.conf