Using a CF card to enhance your DM7025
Why?
- Increase the flash size. The dm7025 only has 32MB flash.
- Faster boot time. Not requiring to mount the slow jffs2 filesystem and no longer needing compression to fit it all into the flash. Mine boots from off to encrypted TV in 1 minute using an old 256MB card.
- Allow online upgrades. Because of the small flash and the way it is compressed, online updates will often fail because the flash runs out. Using the CF card, the box can be upgraded daily -like the others- without ill effects.
How?
Shut down the box and insert a CF card (you cannot "hot plug") if you haven't already done so. Start the box.
From the menu, choose settings, system, harddisk, initialize and format the CF card (again, if you haven't already done that. The card must be formatted in ext3, the box "knows best" how to do that).
From the menu, install the "CF boot" plugin, menu, applications, download (green), systemplugins, cfboot.
After installing CFboot, press the blue button and choose PPanels. There should be a new item "Boot from CF card" in the ppanel list. Choose that.
Run the "Copy internal flash to CF card" option. This will take a few minutes, depending on what you have installed. This actually just runs the "/usr/bin/root_to_cf.sh" script, which you can also run from a telnet/ssh session if you prefer that.
If this runs okay, the system is ready. Just reboot the box and it will start from CF instead.
What?
The plugin makes a copy of the root filesystem onto the CF card. The kernel remains in flash (in the 4MB "boot" partition).
If you remove the CF card, the system will boot from internal flash. You can use this as a "backup" system. I advise making the move to CF after doing all the configuration and installing and configuring the softcam and settings. This gives you a box that will always be able to go back to a known stable state.
You can switch between CF and internal flash boot from the PPanel. If you boot from flash, you can see the CF card in /media/cf as usual, if you boot from CF, the internal flash is not mounted at all (this saves memory and reduces startup time).
The CF card can be used as always for storing picons, timeshift, and whatever you like. Since the CF is now the root, there is actually no difference in putting things in the flash or on the CF (the Picon installer is aware of this, for example).
The CF card can be of virtually any size or model. It should be at least 128MB to be able to store everything. The root filesystem will take about 50MB of the card. There is no maximum size, if the card is compatible with the dm7025 then it will also serve as a boot card. Faster cards may help, but don't expect miracles. Most of the boot time is CPU bound.
