Re: GNUnification

[Joey Hess <joey@kitenet.net>]

[cc's trimmed drastically]

Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> UMSDOS is a hideous system.  I'm currently working on code which will
> allow Linux to drop support for it altogether.  Basically, it's far
> superior to use a file on an MS-DOS filesystem as a device on which you
> create an ext2 filesystem.  Hopefully I can sneak this code in under
> the 2.1 codefreeze (since UMSDOS has major problems in the development
> kernels) but I've been far too busy recently.

This is already quite doable with the loopback device:

root@kite:/dos>mount |grep /dos
/dev/hda1 on /dos type msdos (rw,umask=002,uid=35,gid=35)
root@kite:/dos>dd if=/dev/zero of=loop bs=1000000 count=10
root@kite:/dos>mkfs.ext2 loop
mke2fs 1.10, 24-Apr-97 for EXT2 FS 0.5b, 95/08/09
loop is not a block special device.
Proceed anyway? (y,n) y
Linux ext2 filesystem format
Filesystem label=
2448 inodes, 9765 blocks
488 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=1
Block size=1024 (log=0)
Fragment size=1024 (log=0)
2 block groups
8192 blocks per group, 8192 fragments per group
1224 inodes per group
Superblock backups stored on blocks: 
        8193

Writing inode tables: done     
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done
root@kite:/dos>mount /dos/loop /mnt  -o loop       
root@kite:/dos>ls /mnt
lost+found/
root@kite:/dos>touch /mnt/some_file
root@kite:/dos>mount |grep /mnt
/dos/loop on /mnt type ext2 (rw,loop=/dev/loop0)
root@kite:/dos>umount /mnt                                
root@kite:/dos>                                           
root@kite:/dos>
root@kite:/dos>mount |grep /mnt
root@kite:/dos>dd if=/dev/zero of=loop bs=1000000 count=10

I think there may even be a kernel patch to let it boot off such files (not
sure).

-- 
see shy jo


--  
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-request@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org