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Date:      Mon, 1 May 2000 14:39:44 -0500
From:      Jonathan Lemon <jlemon@flugsvamp.com>
To:        Mike Smith <msmith@FreeBSD.org>
Cc:        Jonathan Lemon <jlemon@flugsvamp.com>, "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.cdrom.com>, Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>, Jonathan Lemon <jlemon@FreeBSD.org>, cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org, cvs-all@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Re: cvs commit: src/lib/libstand ext2fs.c
Message-ID:  <20000501143944.E43222@prism.flugsvamp.com>
In-Reply-To: <200005011938.MAA03050@mass.cdrom.com>
References:  <20000501142840.D43222@prism.flugsvamp.com> <200005011938.MAA03050@mass.cdrom.com>

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On Mon, May 01, 2000 at 12:38:54PM -0700, Mike Smith wrote:
> > On Mon, May 01, 2000 at 12:16:02PM -0700, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote:
> > > > It allows us to see linux partition types, and load from them;
> > > > I should be able to boot a freebsd kernel and memory image from
> > > > a pure linux box, although I've only used it to load the kernel
> > > > at this point.
> > > 
> > > Can we use ext2fs as a root filesystem?  I would really like that. :)
> > 
> > The code is there, but I don't believe we can use linux' init.
> > I was thinking that perhaps the simplest thing would be to drop
> > the loader, kernel and mfs image on a linux system.  Then we could
> > and use the mfs image as the freebsd root.
> 
> Actually, I think we still lose here, since we'd have to smack LILO 
> around to have it boot the loader.  I don't think that will work just yet 
> - it'll probably require some tweaks to the way that BTX starts up.  (I 
> could be wrong here, I haven't looked at LILO for over a year now.)

Actually, all it needs is a wrapper around loader so that it looks
like a x86 boot sector.  I had a loader booting off of lilo, but 
seem to have misplaced the changes I had to do so.


> > It would be nice if there was a way to provide a few files so that
> > Linux users could "upgrade" their kernel to FreeBSD while using their
> > existing system.
> 
> I think "a few files" is going to be a *lot* of stuff.

Encapsulated in a "MFS" filesystem, the user would only see three
files: loader, kernel, mfs image.  I think that would be easier 
than trying to get our kernel to boot using only linux programs.
--
Jonathan


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