[E3-hacking] Mass storage on the E3

[jasmine at electronpusher.org]

On Tue, 21 Mar 2006, David Given wrote:

> Aside from the fact that the E3 has more memory than the first machine I
> ran X on

Oh really.  Yeah, X11 has changed a bit since I ran it on a 2Mbyte machine 
with a 30MHz processor.

, I'm quite aware of its limitations. I don't want to run X. What I
> *do* want to do is to run headless Debian; building a distribution is a
> significantly bigger and more complex job than is really worth doing, and
> using a known good distribution that runs on the ARM will save vast, vast
> quantities of grief.

No, it won't, because, and this is the important part, it won't fit into 
the only fast backing store you have available.  Trust me-  I've built 
more ARM-based appliances than you can shake a stick at, and I've used a 
tiny distribution every time.  And, yes-  I did run server software.  I 
even ran a java VM on one particular (8Mbyte!) platform.  You just need to 
make sure the server software is appropriate to the hardware-  saying "oh 
well I just need to use some swap" isn't the answer.  Your project will 
not end happily.

-J.