On Tue, 03 May 2005 11:51:16 +0200, Richard Danter  
<richard.danter@ntlworld.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I was wondering if it makes sense to try reducing flash disk wear by  
> creating a RAM disk and using it for /tmp? It would also have the  
> benefit of improving access times, but with the loss of the used RAM.  
> Has anyone done this? Is it possible? Is it worth doing?
>
> Also, just for experimenting, I would like to be able to mount the root  
> fs from an NFS server. This means I can experiment with different  
> configurations and try out packages without having to install them on  
> the flash disk. I can see that hpcboot has an option to have the root fs  
> on NFS, but I can't see where to specify the server and path. Does  
> anyone have any notes on how to do this?
>

You can setup a DHCP/BootP Server in your LAN, which will provide the  
Jornada with an IP and the path to the root FS. That's the way I installed  
NetBSD on my CF card BTW: I didn't have a BSD-compatible CF-reader, so I  
booted from NFS and did all the partitioning and installation on the  
Jornada itself. I'm afraid I didn't write any docs, but the diskless  
NetBSD HOWTO will cover pretty much everything you need to know:
http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation/network/netboot
Especially check out the sections "Setting up the dhcpd server" and  
"Setting up the NFS server".

regards,
Jost Menke