Re: rootdisk using romfs
On Thu, Mar 09, 2000 at 01:40:05PM -0500, james@netcsi.com wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 09, 2000 at 04:13:27PM +0000, bug1 wrote:
> > Well, the floppy disks themselves arent used as the root filesystem (im
> > pretty sure), so they dont have to be writetable, anything stored on
> > them can be read only.
>
> The rootdisk per se is not used as root fs, but the filesystem image on
> it is uncompressed and copied into the ramdisk device, where it is then
> used as the root system. There's not provision for it being recopied
> into some writable format. (Romfs is inherently read-only by design.)
>
> > I was thinking of woody
>
> Well, basically I was making the point that a romfs root image would by
> no means be a simple, 'drop-in' item. The way the system starts up
> would beed significant changes. I think there were previous discussions
> having to do with live filesystems on CD that would shed some light on
> the changes needed to run with a read-only root; you can find them
> somewhere in the debian-boot archives.
Actually I checked into this awhile back. To be honest we will get no real
gains from it. Consider that the only uncompressed image we have is
rescue.bin (the rest are already compressed) and the fact that 99% of the
space on it is an already compressed kernel, we have no real gain. In fact
I tested a romfs build of root.bin agains our normal root.bin, and it was
actually too large to fit on a single floppy.
So romfs is no good for our setup, since we already compress as much as we
can.
Ben
--
-----------=======-=-======-=========-----------=====------------=-=------
/ Ben Collins -- ...on that fantastic voyage... -- Debian GNU/Linux \
` bcollins@debian.org -- bcollins@openldap.org -- bmc@visi.net '
`---=========------=======-------------=-=-----=-===-======-------=--=---'
Reply to: