CardFS HowTo

• What is CardFS?
• Requirements
• Installation
• Re-Installing cardfs without flashing
• Moving /opt, /usr and /bin to the SD card

What is CardFS?

CardFS is a method to install applications onto a SD card right after flashing a ROM. It is using a cardfs image (cardfs-$something.bin) which contains said applications. The image is basically just a tar.gz archive containing the applications and all their dependencies. It was created after compiling the initrd.bin which comes with it.

Requirements

My ROMs are build for the Z5000 and Z5500 Sharp Zaurus (Collie). The ROMs will not work with any other Zaurus.

If you are interested in porting "hentges" ROMs to other devices using OpenEmbedded, drop me an email.

CardFS needs an (almost) empty SD card with at least 32Mb of free space. The SD card must not contain any system directories like etc, lib, bin, usr, opt...(you get the idea). Own directories are fine. As is a "root" directory.
If the installer finds any system directory, it will prompt you to remove them prior to installing cardfs.
The installer will not touch your own directories on the card if you don't tell it to. Ever.

Installation

I'm shipping my ROMs tar.gz compressed. You need to extract initrd.bin from it. Winzip can do so just fine.

• Copy initrd.bin and zImage onto your CF card.
• Copy cardfs-$whatever.bin either onto your CF card or your SD card.
• Insert both cards and flash like usual.

A blue dialog will pop up and ask you if you want to install the cardfs image. Enter the text "ok" (do not press the OK button!). The Opie GUI should come up after installation has finsihed.

Re-Installing cardfs without flashing

If you have messed up your SD card, you can easily re-install the cardfs.

• Copy cardfs-$whatever.bin into /mnt/ram, /mnt/cf or /mnt/card
• Quit the Opie GUI (Settings / Quit)
• Log in to the console as user root (no password)
• Run "rm /etc/.cardfs_installed"
• Run "cardfs_install.sh

A blue dialog will pop up and ask you if you want to install the cardfs image. Enter the text "ok" (do not press the OK button!). After installation has finished, reboot your Z. It should be back to normal (if you didn't mess up your ROM, too).

Moving /opt, /usr and /bin to the SD card

The cardfs ROMs support moving /opt, /usr and /bin to your SD card using the mount -o bind trick.

It will not free up any space in / but you can boot without SD card even after moving the directories.

As this feature hasn't been tested a lot (I don't use it), it must be enabled manually by deleting the file "/etc/.mvroot_done" and rebooting.

A blue dialog will pop up and ask you if you want to move the directories. Enter the text "ok" (do not press the OK button!).

Do not try this if your SD card is smaller than 64Mb!