[nylug-talk] Linux Newbie Seeks Embedded Wisdom

[Jason Van Anden]

That was fast - thanks.

First off, this system will devoted to running one application - a  
full screen java (1.4.2) art video game (of sorts) using a touch  
screen.  In a perfect world, I would run a flavor of Linux devoted to  
running Java on a VIA C3 with multimedia capabilities - but so far I  
have not found it.   I was able to install all of this running off a  
hard drive and I am very pleased with the results.  What I want to do  
now is run it off CF instead.

I understand that there are ways to abstract Linux to install just  
what you need, but I am too new to grasp this and not interested in  
investing the time involved to ramp up on this at the moment.  I have  
an IDE CF reader and two 4 gig CF cards to play with.  My C3 system  
has 1 gig of RAM.

I stumbled upon a few articles about installing Linux on a compact  
flash card.  These articles warn that CF has a limit on writes - so  
it recommends installing Linux without a swap and turning off  
logging, etc... but these articles raised a number of questions for  
me - and this is what I am looking for help with.

I was typing a bunch of questions/concerns but then realized that  
this all could come down to one question ... assuming I have enough  
space on the CF card to contain the installation, is it OK for me to  
install directly onto the Compact Flash card, customize the  
configuration (remove applications I do not need, install java,  
recompile the kernel for C3, etc ...) and then afterwards set it to  
"read only", and eliminate the swap drive to safe guard it against  
repeated writing or will the installation itself write so many times  
to the CF disk that it will use it up?

Thank You,
Jason