install full to usb drive

[disgustipated]

is there any way to actually install full on a usb drive? it is the only reason why i have not updated to nas4free from freenas7 build that is freebsd9.0(0.7.5 revision9898). I have been running it this way for over a year now and not had any issues. the reasons i need full is i have other services running as well as use it to compile small applications. I dont want to have to hack around and create symblinks and all of that.

one "workaround" i was thinking of trying was installing to a VM and then doing a dd of that drive then restoring it to the usb drive.

[raulfg3]

the easy way is boot from cd (or USB recently, but need to download apropiate img) and choose option to install full +Swap , whem promt about size of boot partition Nas4Fre suggest the minimun (384MB), please select bigest size posible for your USB key ( I have $GB CF and select 2048MB, because I don't need more to install minidlna and other packages).

[disgustipated]

oh, so it doesnt force you to have it installed on a physical drive any longer when youre doing full?

[raulfg3]

NO, I use a CF , it's conected to a CF2IDE card to onboard IDE port , but I test sucesfully to install to USB key ( use a good know brand), no need to be a HD.

this is true from FreeNAS too, so I don't understand why you think that a HD is need to full install.

PD: You only need to move logs to /mnt/yourmount to minimize writes on USB , but is not mandatory.

[alexey123]

Use full install on USB flash is not good idea. I check - it work, but..
I make tests. I have IDE drive on nas4free server only, and test was very simple

dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/disk/filetes bs=1 count=200000
200000+0 records in
200000+0 records out
200000 bytes transferred in 0.735843 secs (271797 bytes/sec)

dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/disk/filetes bs=512 count=2000
2000+0 records in
2000+0 records out
1024000 bytes transferred in 0.014863 secs (68895850 bytes/sec)

dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/disk/filetes bs=6000 count=200
200+0 records in
200+0 records out
1200000 bytes transferred in 0.007141 secs (168046636 bytes/sec)


dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/disk/filetes bs=10k count=200
200+0 records in
200+0 records out
2048000 bytes transferred in 0.014810 secs (138284146 bytes/sec)

Freebsd system files have small size, use ramdisk for system is better way if you want use CF or USB-flash.
for example - ramdisk speed

[armandh]

here we go again
yes you can

CAVEAT

flash memory is subject to write wear
advanced flash memory devices have extensive wear leveling management
a flash device is least suited to virtual memory storage

a worn out usb device, like a worn out Hdd, will fail the NAS
and likely do it sooner than a good Hdd in the same service.

[disgustipated]

cool, thanks for the input guys, im aware of the risks and write wear and all that.

i had moved tmp and some other locations to the /mnt drives but I missed log. going to do that tonight...as well as begin planning my move to nas4free

i was thinking that since v8 required it to be on a hdd that would carry over. i know its a different project and completely different and all but i was thinking as if that requirement had carried over for some reason.

[fsbruva]

The other options (way more elegant, in my mind) is to avoid the symlinking and put the custom stuff in a jail. There is an easy to follow HOWTO in the wiki. http://wiki.nas4free.org/doku.php?id=do ... s&s[]=jail

It allows an embedded install to get all the benefits of embedded (fault tolerant --> reboot == reset), low disk read/writes, but also gets to pkg_add -r like the big boys. The jail can reside on a ZFS pool, so you get redundancy and high read speeds if it's a mirror. You can upgrade the OS within the jail and not break the webgui or php (kind of important).

Also, if someone obtains root privileges inside the jail.... no big deal. You can still SSH or webgui into NAS4Free and shut the jail down.