i want a linux install on compact flash disks - i have enough to use up 1gb of space, using 4 disks and cf-ide adaptors. they will run of an itx mb, (shuttle type), and will be used to access two black and white camera's either through a framegrbber or even better (cheaper) using two firewire / usb2 webcams - it will run software called gandalf - which is 3d software - is this possible, and does anyone have any hints/tips/tricks for me?

My ideal solution would be 2 itx mbs, one running the cameras and one running the other stuff to map and move a robot, hence the reason for the itx mb's. Also i would like to have a semi realtime update broadcast using either wifi or bluetooth to a user laptop some distance away, with high level (go over there) commands sent to the robot.

Is this possible?

I have a Lex System running ipcop from a CF card. this is only a 64mb card but it does work fine.

There is lots of info about booting linux from CF. I am not sure what you are going to do with 1Gb of flash memory. Keeping in mind that CF may only stand a few hundred thousand erase/write cycles you don't want to store any rapidly changing data there.

The normal thing is to use the CF read-only (or read-mainly), like a CDROM, and surely your o/s and apps will take up much less than that. For specific flash distros see e.g. Puppy linux

http://www.goosee.com/puppy/ (needs 52Mb)

(haven't used it myself) or the ultra-small SPB linux

http://www.8ung.at/spblinux/

which fits on an 8Mb card (with lots of room to spare).

Plenty of others I'm sure.

Yes, you can't mount a CF card as /. It will be toast in a month.

I created a distro to run from CF cards for my own personal use.

The way mine is setup is that the CF card holds my kernel and initrd image (plus the boot loader, which is SYSLINUX). SYSLINUX loads the kernel, then uncompresses the initrd image into a RAMDisk. In this case, the initrd image is the entire Linux system.

I use gzip compression on the initrd before I but it on the card, so I can reduce it to 1/3 it's original size.

All in all, the initrd image is just under 9 MB, and the kernel is around 1.3 MB (monolithic). When it is decompressed into the RAMDisk the system is 28 MB.

I run it on a 32 MB card, and as you can see I could triple the size of my system and still have room to spare, but it just so happens that I can get all the software I need from the 8 MB image.

Although some space on the CF card is taken up by a ext2 partition that I mount as /etc, so that changes to the system won't be lost after a reboot.

To get to the point, 1 GB of Flash is way more than you would ever require, and you can't just install a normal system on it.