Re: rootdisk using romfs

[bug1 <bug1@netconnect.com.au>]

> 
> 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

Fair enough, i did measure about 6KB savings on the compressed root
disk, maybe i did something wrong.

The other benefit could be that there would be minimal driver space
required to be compiled into the kernel. ext2, iso9660, fat or whatever
other filesystems could all be loadable modules. 

I think the point being made to me in previous mails, is that at least
one read-write filesystem still has to be there somewhere, so ext2 if
not compiled into the kernel would have to be loaded in an initrd before
the proper root filesystem is loaded.

I have heard that a module is a fair bit larger than the same feature
compiled into the kernel, i havent tried this on ext2 myself, maybe this
would make the idea practicle.

Anyway i just mentioned this because it seems woody looks like having a
very modular kernel, so maybe this direction could have lead all the way
to romfs, no big deal.

Glenn McGrath