[Voyage-linux] ext3

[Jeff R. Allen]

> I don't bother with ext3 since it drastically reduces the lifetime of
> the CF card.  Also, log files and the like are not written to disk so
> there is not as much IO as you might think.

Not to be critical, but your response is contradictory and I can't
make sense of it. Can you clarify?

Some facts:
  * under voyage, the root is mounted read-only, which means you can
use it on a CF card with no degradation no matter what filesystem you
use.
  * In stock Voyage, files are only written to the CF card when you do
the explicit sync operation of the stuff in /rw back to /ro, or when
you explicitly remount the root rw and start scribbling on things with
your own scripts/servers/etc.

I'm very interested in this right now, because I'm currently
contemplating what the right mix is between ramdisk and CF disk when
running a mySQL database. I'm currently leaning towards running it in
RAM, and flushing to CF card via mysql_copy under app control -- so
that the app only flushes the database when it knows there's been a
precious write.

I'm an OpenWRT user too, and I'm considering using a jffs2 overlay for
my ext2 formatted mysql-dump filesystem, just like OpenWRT does for
it's entire filesystem.

Anyone got any suggestions for how to safely do regular writes?

  -jeff