Date: Tue, 2 Apr 1996 10:43:54 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> To: msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au (Michael Smith) Cc: dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu, paul@riker.comcirc.com.au, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org, questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Installing FreeBSD onto a DOS partition Message-ID: <199604021743.KAA16535@phaeton.artisoft.com> In-Reply-To: <199604020801.RAA13159@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> from "Michael Smith" at Apr 2, 96 05:31:19 pm
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> > > I want to install FreeBSD onto my PC without re-formatting/re-partitioning > > > my Windows 95 installed hard drive. > > > > No. > > Not yet. Someday I'll get the 'slab' code cleaned up and get someone to > commit it, but work has been really heavy of late 8( He doesn't want the "hosted OS" code; he wants UMSDOS. One annoying thing about UMSDOS is that it uses --LINUX-.--- instead of -UMSDOS-.--- so that it is OS dependent. 8-(. The new devfs code would allow this if the hosted FS could be recognized as a root FS. There are two ways to do this: 1) Limit the scope, per a chroot, and put the intelligence in the MSDOSFS to allow the DOS FS to still be mounted. 2) Compile a chroot for a root dir mount point into the config file for a kernel (like Linux does after a kernel compile when it blows the LILO data). The second way requires some additional mount changes (which I am told are being considered for integration). There still isn't a UMSDOS FS (even though such would be *easy* to implement in a slightly cleaned up Heidemann framework in FreeBSD -- just like quota code that applies to all file systems). If you are willing to do some hacking, you could make this work with no more than say two weeks of total effort and some patches to cause maunts to be called back and inclusion of the devfs as the default /dev. If you are interested, you should get a machine up on -current and get the devfs changes for running without a /dev that have been posted to the current mailing list recently. I can give you the modified mount code, and point you at some code to allow you to implement UMSDOS-like attribute files using mount overlays. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.
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