Re: [Devil-linux-develop] stuff on CD and memory usage

[Bruce S. <bw...@ar...>]

> I just checked in a bunch of changes, which free up about 20 MB RAM. This
> means you're able (again) to boot with 64MB.
> 
> I was thinking if we should change our initial strategy  on move as much as
> we can onto the CD.

I tend to agree with you.

> Pro:
> - needs less RAM
> - more secure (nobody can modify the files)
> - easier to support eDL (embedded Devil-Linux or however you want to name
> it)
> - easier to support booting from USB memory stick or similar.
> 
> Contra:
> - slower, needs to spin the CD before it can access data
> - could "break" some older CD drives (they would fail anyway at some point)
> - file/folder access on CD can't be restricted (we could use GRSecurity's
> RBAC)

I definitely think we should do it with all interactive programs
(anything run from the command prompt, editors, ftp, telnet, ...).
In fact, I've already been doing that on all programs I added.

I'm not sure about daemons that run all the time.  I don't want my CD
spinning except when I'm actually logged on to DL and doing something.

But, I think it's worth testing on Daemons.  It's very likely that once
a program is loaded into memory that it won't need to access the CD
after it's started.  Filesystem cache should take care of much of this.
We should test this.  If it works without spinning the CD, then I'm all
for moving possible to CD.

 - BS