[Server-devel] [XSCE] Root fs on XO1

[Sameer Verma]

On Fri, Aug 9, 2013 at 2:53 AM, George Hunt <georgejhunt at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Jerry, et al,
>
> The motherboard flash on an XO1 is 1GB. The kernel, rootfs, provided by OLPC
> Boston for the XO1 occupies 745MB. The server software (XSCE) we have been
> adding on top of the OS occupies about 1.3GB.  So obviously an additional SD
> card is required.
>
> My first approach has been to start with a vfat formatted SD card, change
> its format to ext4, without changing its partition layout (I think this
> avoids creating erase block/OS write mismatch, which slows and wears SD
> cards prematurely). Then I have been copying large chunks from the JFFS to
> the SD card, and sym-linking to it, so that additional yum install
> operations are diverted to the SD card.
>
> Recently, Jerry has suggested that I just ignore the motherboard jffs flash,
> and run entirely off the SD card.  I've been studying how to accomplish
> this.  It looks to me like the <OS>.img file available for the XO1 is in
> jffs2/mtd format which would be appropriate for "dd"ing directly to the
> motherboard flash, but probably not correct for "dd"ing to an SD card.
>
> So here is my question: Does it make sense to let the openfirmware bios
> write the OS image to the jffs on the motherboard, and then for me to rsync
> that OS, as data,  to an ext4 formatted (not repartitioned) SD card? If I do
> this will the presence of a signed kernel on the SD card cause the boot
> loader to choose the SD card, ignore JFFS, even if the XO is still secured?
>
> George

George,
Have you looked at the XS-on-XO1 0.6 image? Just curious...
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS-on-XO

cheers,
Sameer