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Date:      Wed, 9 Feb 2000 16:40:59 +0000 (GMT)
From:      Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com>
To:        kseel@utcorp.com (Kurt Seel)
Cc:        freebsd-fs@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: booting from dos fs?
Message-ID:  <200002091640.JAA11541@usr07.primenet.com>
In-Reply-To: <389C5AA7.CE0A56F2@utcorp.com> from "Kurt Seel" at Feb 05, 2000 12:15:20 PM

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>  Subject says it all.
>  Has anyone ever considered it? Maybe with a chroot
> to a vnnode? ...

Yes.  It is easy, if you modify the mount code to move
the root vs. non-root distinctions to upper level code,
which makes all file systems equally able to be used as
the root filesystem, instead of requiring per FS VFS_MOUNTROOT
entry points.

This involves adding a VFS_SETMINFO to set the last mounted
on information for the filesystem into upper level code,
removing the per FS VFS_MOUNTROOT, where it exists, and
moving the non-root mount vnode covering operation to the
common upper level code (which means a seperation of the
mount operation from the mappinging into the FS hierarchy
operation).

If you don't want to have to spam your DOS FS with BSD
files in the expected locations (e.g. "/kernel"), then you
need working filesystem stacking (also rather trivial to
get running, if you discard a number of bad assumptions
about how VM and cache coherency need to be handled in
order to get backing objects: VOP_FINALVP, or do read/getpages
write/putpages hacks) to be able to use a "UMSDOS"-like
stacking layer to reroot the filesystem in a sub-toplevel
directory, and provide UNIX access control and timestamp
semantics.

If you don't know what a "UMSDOS" stacking layer should
look like, you should look at the "UMSDOS" FS in Linux, as
written by Udo Walter[sp?] (though I recommend using
"-UMSDOS-.---" instead of "-LINUX--.---" as the poop-file
name for storing per directory file attribution information
when you implement).

All told, it's about a 40 man-hour job.


					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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