[Asterisk-Users] How hard to create Asterisk for Compact Flash?

[asterisk at anime.net]

On Wed, 1 Mar 2006, Hadley Rich wrote:
> On Wednesday 01 March 2006 14:15, mustardman29 wrote:
>> How hard is it to create my own version of Linux/Asterisk to run on Compact
>> Flash.  I have seen 1GB Sandisk CF for as low as $50 recently so small size
>> is not too critical.  I won't be using AMP or anything like that either.
>> The most important thing is for it to be read only so the CF is not
>> constantly being written to so it will last a long time.  Voicemail and
>> config files will be stored on a second CF that is read/write.
> You could use any distro you want really. Some good options would probably be;
>
> - Debian (check out flashybrid package for read only root)
> - Gentoo (I know there is a read only root tutorial around somewhere)
> - Slackware (read only root should be fairly easy too)
> - Arch (I have my own experimental read only root package for this --uses
> rsync, similar to flashybrid)

I did this recently using ubuntu, onto a 1gb CF on an x86_64 PC. It is not 
a "slim" install by any means, but it is completely self hosting with the 
ability to compile the kernel and asterisk. And I have several hundred MB 
left over for voicemail -- plenty I think for even busy offices.

The trickiest part was setting up all the symlinks for a ramdisk, and 
setting up scripts to save/restore persistent data on CF across reboots.

-Dan