Re: Dedicate Zaurus Drive to OpenBSD

On 10/23/07, Patrick Heim <Zaurusmaldoror.cotse.net>
wrote:
> Folks,
>
> I'm getting ready to upgrade to 4.2 on my Zaurus and am
debating a few
> options.
>
> Is there a downside (not using Linux is not a downside)
to completely
> deleting all Linux related partitions on an SLC-3000
and dedicating the
> full drive to OpenBSD?  Any caveats to watch out for? 
Is OpenBSD in any
> way dependent on Linux as a bootloader?

No, it's perfectly doable. I figured it out with a day of
hacking
around. A problem I ran into was that the CF card I used to
put the
installsets on was FAT formatted, so the filenames came out
all wrong
and install.sh couldn't find them.

The linux partitions on the disk are not actually linux.
They are
purely used for data. Even now, there is still linux on my
zaurus, and
if I just booted into the rescue linux (hold B and D when
first
applying power: either inserting the battery or pressing the
power
button from a fully halted state) and mounted the flash
chip
filesystems and edited the rc scripts I could boot it....
except that
in the rc scripts some intern has written them so they will
horribly
die if they can't find the expected linux partitions on the
microdrive.

OpenBSD depends on linux as a bootloader only because it has
no jffs2
support (the only jffs2 driver is GPL right now) /yet/. If
it had
jffs2 support you could put the bootloader on the flash
chip's first
partition and a rootfs on the other ones and the BIOS should
boot it
fine. Actually, come to think of it, is there any reason
that /boot
could not be placed in the first flash partition right now
and be able
to boot the drive?

Unless I'm mistaken, and the bootloader is not in what Linux
calls
/dev/mtdblock0.


> Also, with 4-8GB CF prices reasonably low, has anyone
successfully
> replaced the microdrive with a solid state CF?  Any
visible performance or
> battery efficiency gains?

Could you do that easily without soldering? I mean, do CFs
have the
same connector as a microdrive..? because that is a very
intriguing
idea.... I'm always dropping my zaurus but if it had a solid
state
drive I wouldn't have to worry.