Date: Tue, 22 Jul 1997 11:11:29 -0600 From: Warner Losh <imp@rover.village.org> To: Simon Shapiro <Shimon@i-Connect.Net> Cc: Michael Smith <msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au>, freebsd-current@freebsd.org, terry@lambert.org, pechter@lakewood.com Subject: Re: Boot file system idea! Slick Message-ID: <E0wqiTB-0003hP-00@rover.village.org> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 21 Jul 1997 22:53:36 PDT." <XFMail.970721232730.Shimon@i-Connect.Net> References: <XFMail.970721232730.Shimon@i-Connect.Net>
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In message <XFMail.970721232730.Shimon@i-Connect.Net> Simon Shapiro writes: : a. Increases the size and complexity of a minimal kernel to include : another file system not necessarily needed otherwise. Not necessarily. If you have a /boot/kernel that is a on FAT and a /kernel that is on a ufs partition, then you needn't have MSDOS support in your kernel. mtools would suffice. Not the most desirable or easiest way to do this, but it would suffice. I've done this on the OpenBSD/arc stuff for a while when the msdosfs stuff was not stable. : b. Uses a standard file system. Which standard? There is nothing more standard than the FAT file system :-) : c. Makes FreeBSD (installation) dependant on MicroSoft. Not necessarily. Booting off a FAT file system doesn't mean booting MS-DOS. However, that would require separate boot blocks than are standard, or to have a boot loader that is named MSDOS.SYS. : d. Allows everyone with a dos floppy (or without) to modify/destroy the : O/S. They can do that now :-) The above is just my two cents from having dealt with a system that you had to boot off of a FAT file system, but that also gave you the freedom to set env vars to tell it how to do its thing. The current BIOSes that are found in PCs may make this situation radically different than it was for me with the ARC BIOS. Warner
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