From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon Aug 21 23:47:27 1995 Return-Path: hackers-owner Received: (from majordom@localhost) by freefall.FreeBSD.org (8.6.11/8.6.6) id XAA07679 for hackers-outgoing; Mon, 21 Aug 1995 23:47:27 -0700 Received: from godzilla.zeta.org.au (godzilla.zeta.org.au [203.2.228.34]) by freefall.FreeBSD.org (8.6.11/8.6.6) with ESMTP id XAA07673 for ; Mon, 21 Aug 1995 23:47:20 -0700 Received: (from bde@localhost) by godzilla.zeta.org.au (8.6.9/8.6.9) id QAA26716; Tue, 22 Aug 1995 16:45:06 +1000 Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 16:45:06 +1000 From: Bruce Evans Message-Id: <199508220645.QAA26716@godzilla.zeta.org.au> To: bde@zeta.org.au, msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au Subject: Re: Using space in a DOS filesystem Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org, roberto@keltia.frmug.fr.net, terry@cs.weber.edu Sender: hackers-owner@FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk >The vn driver is a no-go if we want to boot from this, which is the >whole idea. Remember, the aim here is to provide a safer way to plonk >a FreeBSD filesystem onto a disk covered in a FAT filesystem. You would need to have the vn device and various tools on the boot device. This is acceptable for demos and installations, but not so good for use. >> To test it you could create a slice inside the DOS slice containing the >> file. I think fdisk allows bogus things like that. Not recommended. >Understood. Committing the bogus slice to the partition table looks better than ever. It allows booting from a normal slice. Anything else has large bootstrapping problems. >> The vn driver method already has water :-). Try your file that hides >> the sectors as a vn device. It can't hurt to have the sectors contiguous >Will do - as far as I understand, I can't disklabel a vn device, so it's >not the final answer... vn devices can be both sliced and labeled. They just can't be booted from. Bruce