From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Oct 31 23:06:32 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 66B7116A4CE for ; Sun, 31 Oct 2004 23:06:32 +0000 (GMT) Received: from sccimhc91.asp.att.net (sccimhc91.asp.att.net [63.240.76.165]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EE71F43D31 for ; Sun, 31 Oct 2004 23:06:31 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from freebsd@nbritton.org) Received: from nbritton.org (12-223-129-46.client.insightbb.com[12.223.129.46]) by sccimhc91.asp.att.net (sccimhc91) with SMTP id <20041031230631i9100hoomoe>; Sun, 31 Oct 2004 23:06:31 +0000 Message-ID: <41856FF7.60502@nbritton.org> Date: Sun, 31 Oct 2004 17:06:31 -0600 From: Nikolas Britton User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: LukeD@pobox.com References: <41846C2A.9080206@nbritton.org> <20041031063205.GB560@bsdbox.farid-hajji.net> <41853BC3.7040505@nbritton.org> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Laptops as routers X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 31 Oct 2004 23:06:32 -0000 Luke wrote: > >> If you are worry about power consumption or reliability when using >> old computers I have some general tips for you: >> 1. Don't use a storage device that has spinning disks, instead use a >> CF card, Zip Drive/Disk, etc. >> http://www.cfide.co.uk/compact_flash_ide_adapters.shtml > > > To go off on a bit of a tangent here, I find the idea of replacing > hard drives with flash memory intriguing. When I first heard someone > talk about doing this several years ago, the idea was quickly shot > down by people saying that flash memory has a very short lifetime when > you write to it. Even a system as minimal as a firewall will require > frequent write operations if it does any logging at all. > > Has this limitation been overcome in recent years? > Google isn't turning up any recent articles on this subject for me. > Yes and No, The problem is still there but when your dealing with an 8MB FreeBSD system (m0n0wall) all's you have to do is make a ram drive and copy the system to it. Then the only time you access the Flash device is at boot or when making changes to the config file, etc, this is how m0n0wall does it.