Three Debian Etch updates

I have my Self-Reliant Thin Client running Debian Etch turned on all of the time. I haven't been able to find power-usage specs for the Maxspeed Maxterm (it could be a 5300, but there are no model numbers on the box), but with no moving parts, a Mini-ITX-size motherboard, Mini-ITX-type fanless power supply and fanless VIA C3 Samuel CPU, as well as non-working case fan (except when tilting said case at a 45-degree angle) and a Compact Flash chip instead of a spinning hard drive and no optical drive, the thing is totally silent and must be fairly sparing on electricity use.

I don't think I even moved the mouse yesterday, but today when I brought it out of screen-saver mode, there were three updates to Debian Etch:

dbus
dbus-1-utils
libdbus-1-3

Thus far, the 8 GB Transcend Ultra Speed 133x Compact Flash is performing quite well, meaning it hasn't died.

The last time I killed a CF chip, a 1 GB Transcend, I think the premature death occurred due to inserting or removing the module while it was mounted.

Since in this case I have the Self-Reliant Thin Client sealed, that CF chip is staying in there and won't be plugged and unplugged all that often.

That might stay true, but I want to get more CF chips and load different OSes on them. Then I could remove the cover to the CF-to-IDE board in the thin client and pop in and out different CF cards with totally different configurations.

Some of the CFs I'd want to do:

• Puppy Linux (could be a much smaller CF due to the nature of the Puppy distro and its "frugal" install)
• OpenBSD (I'm anxious to see how easy/difficult it would be to install to CF)
• Wolvix (which also offers a "frugal" install, though I'd chose a "traditional" hard drive install so I could use slapt-get/Gslapt to update the box)

Not having an optical drive hooked up makes the "preparation" of CF cards on the Self-Reliant Thin Client difficult. To install a new OS, I'd have to:

• Remove eight screws to open the case
• Remove the CF card cover
• Remove current CF card and plug in new one
• Unplug the CF board's IDE cable from both the CF board and the motherboard
• Plug in a standard IDE hard-drive cable into the CF board on one end, the motherboard on the other
• Plug CD-ROM drive into "middle" of IDE cable
• Plug hard-drive-style power cable (the thin client has one, even though it doesn't need it for its intended purpose)
• Install new distro (and probably do more than one so I don't have to repeat this procedure)
• Test new distro
• Remove IDE hard drive cable
• Plug CF board's IDE cable into CF board and motherboard
• Replace case cover

I could leave the CF board/adapter's cover off if I wanted to do a lot of swapping of CF cards. It would be a very easy plug-and-play way to swap distros, that's for sure.

And I could keep the current 1 GB USB flash drive plugged in for backups of the various systems. That would also facilitate file-sharing between the OSes on the multiple CF cards.