SD card unpartitioned space -- used for swap?

[James Cameron]

On Mon, Dec 06, 2010 at 12:30:52AM +0000, Tiago Marques wrote:
> That's strange, wherever I have used flash memory to serve as boot
> drive, the kernel/userspace waits for the writes to be complete before
> powering down. I have not experienced corruption that looks anything
> similar to what's described. So the software is thinking it has
> written it but it doesn't?

It's not visible corruption as such, since the card becomes completely
unusable, no read, no write, no response.  Bricked card.

Chris explained well but I'll phrase it another way; it's a hardware
problem with the card, combined with our pattern of use in manufacturing
tests, combined with a lack of specification adherence for the
workaround which the card manufacturer asked us to deploy.

It might also relate to a problem recently detected, where certain SD
cards do not properly reset when used in an XO.

See http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/10512 "XO-1.5 and XO-1.75 A1 external
SD card slot does not discharge supply".

-- 
James Cameron
http://quozl.linux.org.au/