Re: Why minix for root.bin?

[Hartmut Koptein <koptein@et-inf.fho-emden.de>]

> > > Another idea that returns from the old ages: has anyone tried using
> > > "read-only fs"?
> > 
> > You mean iso9660 ?
> No, ROM-FS,  a specially designed filesystem that is as compact as possible,
> in kernel code as well as on disk. It was made for use in boot disks etc.

Ah, thnx. Looks good:

For comparison, both the older minix and xiafs (the latter is now
defunct) filesystems, compiled as module need more than 20000 bytes,
while romfs is less than a page, about 4000 bytes (assuming i586
code).  Under the same conditions, the msdos filesystem would need
about 30K (and does not support device nodes or symlinks), while the
nfs module with nfsroot is about 57K.  Furthermore, as a bit unfair
comparison, an actual rescue disk used up 3202 blocks with ext2, while
with romfs, it needed 3079 blocks.

To create such a file system, you'll need a user program named
genromfs.

genromfs_0.3-2  is available in admin/

MfG,


    Hartmut