From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Jan 31 10:01:19 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id KAA22112 for questions-outgoing; Wed, 31 Jan 1996 10:01:19 -0800 (PST) Received: from phaeton.artisoft.com (phaeton.Artisoft.COM [198.17.250.211]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id KAA22100 for ; Wed, 31 Jan 1996 10:01:13 -0800 (PST) Received: (from terry@localhost) by phaeton.artisoft.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id KAA10081; Wed, 31 Jan 1996 10:58:18 -0700 From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199601311758.KAA10081@phaeton.artisoft.com> Subject: Re: Run BSD under DOS To: msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au (Michael Smith) Date: Wed, 31 Jan 1996 10:58:18 -0700 (MST) Cc: pbanks@candle.com, questions@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: <199601310259.NAA17075@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> from "Michael Smith" at Jan 31, 96 01:29:22 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk > > It is possible to load and run BSD from a DOS partition? > > > > For various reasons, I can not re-format my hard disk to create unique > > partitions for BSD. > > I'm working on code to do this, but at this point in time you need to > repartition. > > Note that you don't have to reformat, you can use a tool like FIPS to shrink > your DOS partition to make room for FreeBSD. There is no umsdos driver for FreeBSD. Linux does this by establishing an attributes file called "--LINUX-.---" in each directory of a subtree hierarchy to combat POSIX non-compliance of the FAT FS. This should probably be called "-UMSDOS-.---" to be OS independent, IMO. The file is used to store attributes (uid/gid/ctime/modes) for the files in the directory. Obviously, this file is not updated or respected by DOS when accessing the FS. This requires a second stage boot that knows about the FAT/UMSDOS FS (or, more typically, Linux uses a boot floppy that mounts / from the hard drive from a "/linux" directory under the FAT root that has UMSDOS permissions on the underlying hierarchy. One alternative for FreeBSD is to make a boot floppy and then use vnconfig to configure a DOS file as a file system and mount it. This is a bit of work. Is there some technical reason that you need to use a 8-10 times slower FS to store your files? Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.