Re: diff list 1 vs. 2, request for opinions what to put in

Note:

If there is *space* on the floppy, you can already do this easily... but
some versions have 0 sectors free.

On versions with *space free*, you can already put such a user.tar.gz on
there, and just add code to rc.custom.gz (also editable on the disk) to
untar it into /tmp and install the modules.

The reason I don't do something like this in general is that I aim to have
0 sectors free.  But, 1.7.366 and 2.0.31 both have lots of space.

-Tom

On Fri, 19 Apr 2002, Tom Oehser wrote:

> Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2002 07:50:09 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Tom Oehser <[email protected]>
> To: Gernot Fink <[email protected]>
> Cc: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: [tomsrtbt] diff list 1 vs. 2,
>      request for opinions what to put in
>
>
> > I would like that the bootscript unpacks a tarfile form the disk like user.tar
> > and installs it from the rootdir. Then it can call user.s.
> >
> > So i can easey make a tar with my modules (ne2k,rlt3139,..).
> > If there are enough space free a simple mount,copy,unmount
> > make the disk spezial.
>
> No, this is a very space wasting approach.
>
> The cost in space is not worth making something that is already possible
> easier.
>
> The design philosophy as stated in the FAQ and expanded on from time to
> time is:
>
>  As much as possible on one floppy.
>
> Any time I have choices between making one thing easier or making another
> thing possible at all, the second will win.  That is, I could write a lot
> of menus and make it easy to modify and write a customizer, and someone
> else would lose functionality completely.
>
> It turns out that filesystems are wasteful of space, that is the real
> problem.  If *anything*, I would remove the *first* filesystem, and just
> stick the kernel and ramdisk on there.  That would save space.  And/or, I
> might want to modify the bootloader so that the body is more efficiently
> stored.  Basically, the ideal is something like .archive.bz2 stuck right
> on the disk.  Cpio is better than tar, I think because of the blocking,
> and maybe ar would be better still, almost certainly I would get gains if
> I designed a format just for space efficiency.  The current minix root fs
> bzip2ed onto raw space and minix floppy root with the kernel is *already*
> wasting a lot of space.  But, if I replaced the floppy root with a
> straight kernel, there would be NO place to modify easily, including
> rc.custom.gz and settings.s; and, if I replaced the minix.bz2 root with an
> archive, I would have to further modify the kernel and it might be a wash
> because the kernel would have to then be able to make a filesystem.  Maybe
> the best would be to actually compile the root fs INTO the kernel- right
> now, the bzip2 (and formerly gzip) code is in two places- once in the boot
> loader, once in the ramdisk loader.  If I loaded the root fs right with
> the kernel, I could delete the ramdisk loader bzip2 (or maybe the whole
> thing).  But then it wouldn't be a normal ramdisk, or I'd have to get it
> into the buffer cache somehow sometime, I dunno, it might not be worth it.
>
> But, you get the idea, it is already *doable* to completely rebuild and
> customize.  It will never be make *easier at the cost of functionality*.
>
> -Tom
>