Re: [iPAQ] IMPORTANT: don't use /dev/flash6

OK, may I ask, how can I find out how much flash memory does have my iPaq
if I still under Win? Now I hardly trust stuff that written in my
device...

thank you

##############################################################
         Daria I. Kosenko
Relativistic Astrophysics Department
Sternberg Astronomical Institute
tel +7 (095) 9395006 fax +7 (095) 9328841
mailto:lisett.a.t.xray.sai.msu.ru http://xray.sai.msu.su/~lisett
##############################################################
On Wed, 23 Aug 2000, Jim Gettys wrote:

> I've just received a report of someone (who will remain anonymous) who
> noticed that our distribution attempts to mount /dev/flash6, and tried
> writing bits into that flash partition.
>
> Due to the industry wide shortage of flash parts, some of the early iPAQ
> H3600's (e.g. H3630 and H3650's) shipped with 32 meg of flash, but current
> production uses 16 meg of flash as has always been specified for the unit.
> We've not had a 16 meg unit to test with here.
>
> Unfortunately, the person had one of those 16 meg flash units. For our
> demos, we had put the MP3 and MPEG files into that partition, and this
> person noticed our use of that partition, and tried writing there.
>
> So flash6 on 16 meg units wraps at 16 megabytes since the flash part does
> not decode the high order bit, and he therefore overwrote the bootloader,
> making his iPAQ useless.
>
> George is building a kernel with additional checks in it that should prevent
> this happening by accident in the future, and will also be modifying the
> bootloader itself to lock down the flash sector where the bootloader is
> stored to prevent inadvertant overwriting.
>
> We'll make an announcement when this release with the additional sanity
> checking is available (probably later today).
>
> - Jim
>
> --
> Jim Gettys
> Technology and Corporate Development
> Compaq Computer Corporation
> jg@pa.dec.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> iPAQ mailing list
> iPAQ@handhelds.org
> http://handhelds.org/mailman/listinfo/ipaq
>
Received on Wed Aug 23 16:55:05 2000