Re: Debian+umsdos (fwd)

[Raul Miller <rdm@tad.micro.umn.edu>]

Richard Kettlewell:
   Actually I think it would be a good thing if we could support
   Debian entirely over UMSDOS - being able to run Linux without
   having to mess around repartitioning hard discs is going to make a
   lot of people a lot more willing to try it.

Unfortunately, UMSDOS isn't ready for prime time.

I've got a laptop with debian installed on a single umsdos partition.
It works if you don't push it too hard, but:

(1) the directory space sometimes drifts out of sync with the
underlying msdos file system.  [This can be real bad when you lose the
proper name on ld.so].

(2) the readdir mechanism for a single entry is O(n) where n is the
number of preceeding entries in the directory.  For example, at one
point I had a /dev where (cd /dev; echo *) took over a minute,
practically all of which was in readdir().

The umsdos code is ugly (my opinion) -- which is probably a
contributing factor for (1).

Personally, I think that umsdos should get a timestamp at boot-up, and
stamp it's --LINUX-.--- files with this number so it can tell if it's
in sync with dos or not.  The current system has too many compromises
between robustness and performance, and never really does a good job
of getting into sync.

-- 
Raul