[nycbug-talk] how are soekris boxes?

[Kurt Miller]

From: "Barry Kominik" <barry at kominik.net>
> I got mine a few months before all that talk. I love it. I use it as a 
> home firewall/web/mail server running openbsd. I installed a 60 gig 
> laptop hard drive. The only problem I have is heat. The system runs at 
> about 60C which I think is too hot, though I haven't seen any errors. I 
> just bought a cheap usb wifi card with the prism3 chipset. I plan on 
> playing around with making a wifi base station. I'm also thinking of 
> swapping out the hard drive for a compact flash. Has anyone ever seen 
> one of these: US Modular 2.2GB compact flash;  
> http://www.ecost.com/ecost/shop/detail.asp?dpno=338550  In the product 
> details it says the media is glass. I'd love to find out more about this 
> as it is cheap, $176.
> 

I purchased a 64MB compact flash and a USB hard drive to avoid 
heat issues. I plan to use the CF for root and the USB drive for the 
rest. Unfortunately soekris (or is it OpenBSD?) can't boot of a USB 
drive.

I don't know anything about the US Modular CF, but  many people 
like SanDisk CF on the soekris-tech list . Recently  someone posted 
a link to misc at openbsd.org about how SanDisk uses wear leveling 
to prolong CF life:

http://www.sandisk.com/pdf/oem/WPaperWearLevelv1.0.pdf

I haven't had time to setup the soekris box with the 64MB CF and 
USB drive, but I've got my firewall up on another one using 256MB
of a 512MB CF. When I get around to installing the CF/USB combo,
I report any gotchas if I find any.

-Kurt