From owner-freebsd-hackers  Sun Aug 18 09:03:50 1996
Return-Path: owner-hackers
Received: (from root@localhost)
          by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id JAA29787
          for hackers-outgoing; Sun, 18 Aug 1996 09:03:50 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from rover.village.org (rover.village.org [204.144.255.49])
          by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id JAA29782
          for <hackers@FreeBSD.org>; Sun, 18 Aug 1996 09:03:48 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from rover.village.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by rover.village.org (8.7.5/8.6.6) with ESMTP id KAA00347; Sun, 18 Aug 1996 10:03:41 -0600 (MDT)
Message-Id: <199608181603.KAA00347@rover.village.org>
To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
Subject: Re: Nightmare. 
Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.org
In-reply-to: Your message of Wed, 14 Aug 1996 03:56:53 PDT
Date: Sun, 18 Aug 1996 10:03:41 -0600
From: Warner Losh <imp@village.org>
Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.org
X-Loop: FreeBSD.org
Precedence: bulk


: a) Write a filesystem which understands tar files natively.  Note: there may
:    be a slight performance penalty for folks running with their root
:    partitions mounted on a TARFS - perhaps we could note this somewhere.

I have heard rumors from my Linux buddies that they have implemented a
read only tar file system to load the initial modules from their
kernel.  Just boot the tar file, and it will find the rest sort of
idea (actually, I beleive it uses ramdisk or other ram image to store
the tar file).  I beleive the tar ball is freed from memory when the
real file system is finally available.

Warner