Embedded Debian

This page was used as a starting point, and then heavily modified.

Installation

Do a standard Debian installation to the drive. The kernel argument ide=nodma may be required, depending on the CF device used.

Ram Disks

Some filesystems should be mounted as ramdisks to minimize writes to the CF device. Add these lines to /etc/fstab.

tmpfs /var/run  tmpfs defaults 0 0
tmpfs /var/lock tmpfs defaults 0 0
tmpfs /var/log  tmpfs defaults 0 0
tmpfs /tmp      tmpfs defaults 0 0

preinit

Since these filesystems need to be mounted before /sbin/init starts launching services which need to access them, we need to run a helper script before /sbin/init. Create the following file as /sbin/preinit and set it's permissions to 755.

#!/bin/bash

echo "Disable DMA"
hdparm -d0 /dev/hda
echo "Enable some power management and disable spindown"
hdparm B64 -S0 /dev/hda
echo "Enable 32-bit I/O"
hdparm -c3 /dev/hda

echo "Creating tmpfs in /var/log"
mount -n -t tmpfs tmpfs /var/log
echo "Copy /var/log"
cp -a /var/log_persistent/* /var/log

echo "Creating tmpfs in /var/run"
mount -n -t tmpfs tmpfs /var/run
echo "Copy /var/run"
cp -a /var/log_persistent/* /var/log

echo "Done, resume normal operations..."
exec /sbin/init

GRUB

Add init=/sbin/preinit to the kernel options in /boot/grub/menu.lst to tell the kernel to run the preinit script at boot.

ACPI

The ACPI subsystem will try to turn DMA back on, which will cause intermittent issues.

Edit /etc/acpi/sleep.sh and change the hdparm lines with -d 1 to -d 0.

 
 
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