Picks and Pans

It's often a good idea to make the root file system in a embedded system read-only. If you do this and only make changes to files in a ram disk (mounted under /tmp, for example) the device will always come back to a known state when powered up. This is a nice feature and often a requirement.

But sometimes you need to make changes which persist. Check out the "mini fan out" file system. It allows you to layer changes on top of a read-only file system.

I have not used this package directly, but I plan to shortly.

Posted by Brad at 9:40 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Just a quick note on bookmarks. I use several laptops, a common machine at home and a workstation at work. This can sometimes get confusing when I save web bookmarks in various different places.

I recently discovered "foxmarks". I only used Firefox, and foxmarks is an extension which syncs up my bookmarks everyplace I install it. It's very handy.

I also discovered "gmarks", which places the bookmarks in a window on the left makes them easy to use. I'm still on the fence with gmarks

Sometimes I wish there was a way to make cross platform "notebooks" with firefox, which would combine a directory tree under SVN control, bookmarks, pdf and an email folder all into one. And make it easy to archive.

Posted by Brad at 9:29 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)