Other OS running on Zonbu

by **aymeric.augustin** on Wed Jan 16, 2008 6:10 pm

First, please note that Zonbu only supports the Zonbu OS.

You can try the eBox4 drivers here: http://www.compactpc.com.tw/download_drv.htm

For the paging file error, erm, that must be Redmond's definition of user-friendliness

More seriously, I saw that error when running XP on a 2GB CF card. Check how much free space you have. Consider compressing your file system.

by **tsachith** on Thu Jan 17, 2008 6:21 am

My XP pro with SP1 takes about 1.09GB of space. So I guess I have enough free space from 4GB of flash card. I not sure why it does not allow me set a virtual memory size. When I do set a windows recommended size it keeps rebooting when windows loads up. So what I did was I disabled virtual memory but when I install any applications like word it just hangs. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

by **torturedutopian** on Mon Mar 10, 2008 8:45 am

Aymeric,

it seems you wrote that ZonbuOS was using a swap partition. Provided that flash memory usually isn't meant to be written repeatedly (I think a few hundred thousands of writes per sector are possible before cards start getting write errors), isn't it an issue ?

As for all the /home files, are they written every time or only once in a while to preserve the flash memory ?

(for instance, Puppy Linux only writes that data at the end of the session. I wonder how Mandriva handles the problem with Mandriva flash)

Best regards

by **plasmaroo** on Mon Mar 10, 2008 10:25 am

torturedutopian wrote:it seems you wrote that ZonbuOS was using a swap partition. Provided that flash memory usually isn't meant to be written repeatedly (I think a few hundred thousands of writes per sector are possible before cards start getting write errors), isn't it an issue ?

We do extensive testing on the CF cards before deciding which one to ship. Most (but not all) modern cards generally have a fairly decent controller that performs wear leveling across the card sectors and can generally handle up to 100,000 cycles or so if it's SLC flash. So you'd need to totally reflash the whole CF card 100,000 times before you start seeing problems.

torturedutopian wrote:As for all the /home files, are they written every time or only once in a while to preserve the flash memory ?

We just treat the CF card as a normal hard disk, we don't do anything special to reduce the number of write cycles.

by **bidi** on Thu Mar 13, 2008 5:43 pm

plasmaroo wrote:
torturedutopian wrote:We just treat the CF card as a normal hard disk, we don't do anything special to reduce the number of write cycles.

I'd just like to say that's not 100% accurate since Zonbu does use the "noatime" option. Obviously "noatime" can be used on a regular drive, but it's not necessary and hence not done by default at installation time. If not used on a flash card that thing will take a dump fairly quickly since it'll write to the file every time it's opened as opposed to only when it's written to.

I'm trying to install Slackware on a 8GB CF card and would like to hear more on how the Zonbu OS is being booted, if possible. From the output of "mount" I noticed Zonbu is using UnionFS to combine a read-only ext2 file system file + the actual file system (hence why df only shows 2GB available out of the 4GB CF card).

That's interesting an all, but I already know how to deal with all that stuff. What I'm really interested in is the handling of the /var directory. This dir generally changes fairly quickly, and even with the "noatime" option it get written quite a bit. What are you guys doing here? Using a tmpfs?

by **torturedutopian** on Fri Mar 14, 2008 1:22 am

bidi : you should definitely have a look at http://www.slax.org . It uses UnionFS + LZMA + SquashFS, is based on slackware, and is extensible through modules.

edit : I read too fast, don't know how /var is handled, but indeed, a tmpfs seems to be a good solution

I'm interested in your researches as well

by **bidi** on Fri Mar 14, 2008 9:16 am

I've looked at SLAX in the past, but what I want is Slackware, not a derivative since I package software for GNUstep. Also, SLAX uses UnionFS is a different manner than I would like to. What it does is combine all the different modules into appearing as 1 concise file system. What I want to do is combine a read-only FS image with a read/write partition.

I still need to do a little bit more research on the boot process to make this work, but I have a pretty good idea now (it's good to write your ideas down and then read them back, made me realize I was further along than what I thought

).

by **torturedutopian** on Fri Mar 14, 2008 9:19 am

Thanks for the reply !

Well actually, quoting slax.org :

Thanks to the AUFS filesystem, the read-only part of Slax (system data and modules) is overlayed by a writable filesystem. You can modify all areas of the filesystem in Slax without any restrictions. Your changes to the read-only parts are transparently copied to the writable branch and stored in memory or in a persistent directory on your disk or even flash drive.

by **bmakhale** on Thu Apr 03, 2008 2:22 pm

I wonder if anyone would be interested in installing a good working copy of xp on my CF card for a price????

by **tudza** on Fri Apr 04, 2008 4:18 pm

Indeed, I have had no luck creating a replacement CF card with the Zonbu OS on it, much less any other OS.

Can someone explain the behaviour I'm seeing please:

I can run Ubuntu off a USB drive, but only when I have the Zonbu OS CF card installed. When I removed the card and put in a blank ( hoping to create a CF card with my OS of choice ), this behaved just like when I was trying to install Ubuntu from the CD drive. The Ubuntu startup screen with the little orange square going back and forth freezes.

When I made a CF card with Ubuntu on it, it would also run through the USB port, but not when put in place of the Zonbu OS CF. It seemed to get somewhere in the boot process, but died.

The system seems to require the Zonbu CF card to boot up properly even when another boot source is present.

Other OS running on Zonbu

Re: Other OS running on Zonbu

Re: Other OS running on Zonbu

Re: Other OS running on Zonbu

Re: Other OS running on Zonbu

Re: Other OS running on Zonbu

Re: Other OS running on Zonbu

Re: Other OS running on Zonbu

Re: Other OS running on Zonbu

Re: Other OS running on Zonbu

Re: Other OS running on Zonbu

Who is online