asterisk users - Feb 2006 - How hard to create Asterisk for Compact Flash?

I am aware of Astlinux and the other embedded Asterisk solutions out there?
Astlinux is nice but the problem is that when I hit a snag and need to
incorporate a patch and what not I cannot do that with Astlinux because I
cannot compile my own version.

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.

On Wednesday 01 March 2006 14:15, mustardman29 wrote:
> I am aware of Astlinux and the other embedded Asterisk solutions out there?
> Astlinux is nice but the problem is that when I hit a snag and need to
> incorporate a patch and what not I cannot do that with Astlinux because I
> cannot compile my own version.
>
> 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 personally like Arch Linux because of the ease of integration of binary and 
source compiled packages. So incorporating a patch like you mentioned above 
is a simple edit of a PKGBUILD and `makepkg`. My standard (not optimised in 
any way) install with everything I need to run Asterisk comes in just under 
500MB. The downside of Arch for a server is that it has a rolling release.

Of course everyone has their favourite distro, that is just MHO.

HTH

hads

-- 
BOFH excuse #34:

(l)user error

mustardman29 wrote:
>  
> I am aware of Astlinux and the other embedded Asterisk solutions out there?
> Astlinux is nice but the problem is that when I hit a snag and need to
> incorporate a patch and what not I cannot do that with Astlinux because I
> cannot compile my own version.
> 
> 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. 
Did you try the development environment:

http://mirror.astlinux.org/astlinux-devel.tar.bz2

-- 
Kristian Kielhofner

On 3/1/06, mustardman29 <mustardman29@hotmail.com>
wrote:
> I am aware of Astlinux and the other embedded Asterisk solutions out there?
> Astlinux is nice but the problem is that when I hit a snag and need to
> incorporate a patch and what not I cannot do that with Astlinux because I
> cannot compile my own version.
I'm also looking for/testing out some things to do the same.
(basically I want to be able to boot from cd, flash or ide-flash) I'm
now testing out the functionality of dsslive, wich seems to be a cool
framework just to do this kind of stuff.. Very nice is also that it
uses unionfs.

Have a look at their website (http://dsslive.org/) and if you have any
questions or are interested, let me know..

cheers