Messages in this thread | | | Date | Fri, 9 Jan 1998 18:47:20 -0500 | From | "Theodore Y. Ts'o" <> | Subject | Re: devfs |
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From: o.r.c@p.e.l.l.p.o.r.t.l.a.n.d.o.r.u.s (david parsons) Date: 9 Jan 1998 15:28:58 -0800
I want to run a MSDOS filesystem as a root filesystem; it's a cheaper filesystem for a floppy than ext2 is, and the kernels I build only have support for MSDOS, iso9660, and ext2 in them. (And, even with ext2, having a devfs (with major and minor numbers, of course; a devfs without those is, I'm afraid, useless for me.) means I don't have to carry around nearly as many devices in /dev for booting a install/ recovery floppy.)
You can do this already, but you have to use the umsdos filesystem when you mount the MSDOS filesystem under Linux. This will emulate symbolic links, device files, etc. as MS-DOS files. Note that the performance of MS-DOS as a filesystem in general really sucks, since DOS was never intended to be a multi-user, multi-tasking OS. But for people for whom a single filesystem for DOS and Linux is more important than performance, UMSDOS allows you do what you want. (But be careful what you ask for; you may not like it when you get it.)
- Ted
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