I have been using the pc110 for about year now. I installed Slackware
3.4 (3.3?) a while back using the 2.0.30 kernel. I also installed
the PCMCIA package version 2.9.9. I have been running things from
the pcmcia hard disk but I did not like the fact that I had to power
the machine down to load data into it from a laptop/desktop unit.
I only got the pc110, I did not get the expansion unit because I did
not think that I would need it. Instead I got a pcmcia adapter for
the desktop so that I could install the base kernel on it from
Slackware.
So I decided to splurge an add a compact flash card of 48M. This way
I was able to set up a base booting kernel as well as xview + X11R6
files. Currently I boot to the compact flash, while the pcmcia hardrive
is outside of the unit (to make sure that the boot ROM does not cause
problems with the PCMCIA services) and then plug in the harddrive and
mount it to the rest of the file system.
Ok that's the background. My question had to do with a problem I have
been noticing when I umount the harddisk. I am able to remove the
hardrive (without crashing the kernel :) ), plug it in to the desktop or
laptop PCMCIA ports and mount it on the other system. Then what I do
is copy the files I want into the harddisk, umount, hdparm -Y /dev/hde,
/etc/rc.d/rc.pcmcia stop and them remount it onto the pc110.
Much to my dismay when I mount the hardisk back onto the pc110 and look
at the directory I put the data on, the new files are not there!! If
I go through some cycles of mount/umount and force and e2fsck check
I finally get the harddisk files recovered after e2fsck "fixes" the
problem. Mind you, up to this point e2fsck and mount never complains
about the file system being bad!!!
This is definitely not the optimum way of using this wonderfully small
PC. I have ensured that both the desktop, laptop & desktop are using
the same version of the PCMCIA services to no avail. Interestingly
enough this behavior was also recreatable with flash memory as well. So
if anyone has any suggestions of what to look for they would be much
appreciated.
Thanks for reading this long email :) .
Oscar S.
p.s. - If I ever get this small system working right (goal is for
base system, X11, with perl5 + TK extension for applets) I
would be happy to give people a copy of the OS + applications
for others to set up their systems this way. Before there was
a tinyX release but it does not seem to be up to date.
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email: osiguenz nospam at fmi.fujitsu.com
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