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Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 04:59:55 +1000
From: Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au>
Message-Id: <199707221859.EAA05909@godzilla.zeta.org.au>
To: imp@rover.village.org, Shimon@i-Connect.Net
Subject: Re: Boot file system idea! Slick
Cc: freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG, msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au,
        pechter@lakewood.com, terry@lambert.org
Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG
X-Loop: FreeBSD.org
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>: 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

Yes, at a cost of only 8 times as large (for the size of the mtools
package tar gunzipped vs. the size of the msdos LKM), we could avoid
having msdos support in the kernel.

>: 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.

DOS is required to run chkdsk or scandisk, until we have an msdosfsck.
It isn't required to boot.

>: d.  Allows everyone with a dos floppy (or without) to modify/destroy the
>:     O/S.
>
>They can do that now :-)

At least without the dos floppy :-).

Bruce