From owner-freebsd-hackers  Tue Aug 22 09:14:13 1995
Return-Path: hackers-owner
Received: (from majordom@localhost)
          by freefall.FreeBSD.org (8.6.11/8.6.6) id JAA03289
          for hackers-outgoing; Tue, 22 Aug 1995 09:14:13 -0700
Received: from genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au (genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au [129.127.96.120])
          by freefall.FreeBSD.org (8.6.11/8.6.6) with ESMTP id JAA03281
          for <hackers@freebsd.org>; Tue, 22 Aug 1995 09:14:10 -0700
Received: from msmith@localhost by genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au (8.6.9/8.6.9) id CAA27263; Wed, 23 Aug 1995 02:19:14 +0930
From: Michael Smith <msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au>
Message-Id: <199508221649.CAA27263@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au>
Subject: Re: Using space in a DOS filesystem
To: bde@zeta.org.au (Bruce Evans)
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 02:18:07 +0930 (CST)
Cc: bde@zeta.org.au, msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au, hackers@freebsd.org
In-Reply-To: <199508221526.BAA13856@godzilla.zeta.org.au> from "Bruce Evans" at Aug 23, 95 01:26:05 am
Content-Type: text
Content-Length: 1618      
Sender: hackers-owner@freebsd.org
Precedence: bulk

Bruce Evans stands accused of saying:
> >That more or less rules that approach out completely.  We're trying to
> >do an ersatz partition that can do everything a "real" partition does.
> >That's going to have to include booting.
> 
> The standard boot loader isn't going to work on it unless it is partition
> (within another partition :-().

Fair enough.  Under the circumstances, that shouldn't be too hard to
manage.  

> >I can understand that.  How would you feel about being able to recognise
> >one of these ersatz partitions if the info were passed in to the kernel 
> >at bootstrap time?
> 
> The mount of root would probably fail if the partition was invalid.  I
> guess you could put the partition boundaries in the data for the program
> replaces the standard boot loader.  How are you going to select where
> to boot from?  Standard boot managers should be able to handle the
> partition within a partition method (:-().

I'm not sure I can parse that 8)  The idea was to have some way of
avoiding jamming a bogus partition entry into the partition table
every time you wanted to boot. (due to issues with virus tools and the 
like.)

Booting would probably be accomplished with fbsdboot under these
circumstances.

> Bruce

-- 
]] Mike Smith, Software Engineer        msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au    [[
]] Genesis Software                     genesis@atrad.adelaide.edu.au   [[
]] High-speed data acquisition and                                      [[
]] realtime instrument control          (ph/fax) +61-8-267-3039         [[
]] My car has "demand start" -Terry Lambert  UNIX: live FreeBSD or die! [[