Date: Tue, 09 Jul 1996 00:03:30 +0100 From: "Gary Palmer" <gpalmer@FreeBSD.ORG> To: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> Cc: wpaul@skynet.ctr.columbia.edu (Bill Paul), joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de, current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Which tools can back up inodes with 32bit minor numbers ? Message-ID: <26051.836867010@palmer.demon.co.uk> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 08 Jul 1996 15:24:52 PDT." <199607082224.PAA22643@phaeton.artisoft.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Terry Lambert wrote in message ID <199607082224.PAA22643@phaeton.artisoft.com>: > 2) You are required to have working disk drivers and FS > mounts working to do a port to a new platform. I'm curious about this one. Having worked on a port of FreeBSD to another platform (which admitedly died, but that was due to lack of time, not entheusiasm), it seems working filesystems and disk drivers are a fairly major priority, as once you have reached the end of init_main(), you NEED to access a filesystem of some sort to load init and get booting. Ok, so I cheated a bit, and compiled in a 1Mb MFS root filesystem just to get going, but having a root FS in memory does NOT remove the requirement for having a disk-based filesystem, unless you plan to have a fairly large (say, enough to hold the bin dist :-) ) root filesystem in core! And having devfs doesn't really remove the need at all, as during the inital bootstrap stages when you are still working on getting the system tied together, you can use whatever major/minor number pairs you like, and just tweak them to be more sensible later... Ok, so devfs may make it a bit easier (maybe, it's another kernel interface to learn), but I can't see it as a plus in devfs's favour, nor particularly cut down on development time. Gary -- Gary Palmer FreeBSD Core Team Member FreeBSD: Turning PC's into workstations. See http://www.FreeBSD.ORG/ for info
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?26051.836867010>