Compact Flash Debian Gnu/Linux

Introduction

This is a Debian-based Linux system to run on compact flashes. Following are some of its features:

• Stable (Lenny) Debian distribution.
• Standard installation of about 300M in size.
• kernel 2.6.26.
• Writable fielsystems. It is designed to minimize writable accesses to the CF. However, it is recommended to use external storages, as flash memory is limited and not very reliable.
• Expandable to add more standard Debian packages through dpkg mechanism.
• Reliable EXT3 journalling filesystem.
• Instead of hard-wiring the disk device, UUID was used instead so they can be mounted on wide variety of IDE-based compact flash adapter.

Installation

To install the Debian filesystem on a compactflash system, you will need the following:

1. Download the correct image for your compact flash.
2. Using USB compactflash reader/writer to write the image to the compact flash. For example, use the following command to write the image to a 1GB compact flash, assuming that the compact flash in the USB writer shows up as /dev/sda.

   gunzip -c debian-lenny-1gb.img.gz | dd of=/dev/sda bs=16k

3. After the initial installation, it is recommended to run the "base-config" command if a standard Debian configuration is desired.
4. Further customization is possible by running "aptitude" to install Debian packages.

Compact Flash images

1GB compact flash image

2GB compact flash image

4GB compact flash image

Notes:

1. The "root" password is blank. Please secure your installation immediately.
2. There is no warranty. The software is meant for experts. It could destroy your hard drive.
3. Please contact Hacom if you wish to utilize our technical services to customize this distribution for commercial embedded implementations.
4. Please check the archive site at http://support.hacom.net/pub/debian/ for other Debian images.