Subject: Re: softdep?
To: Simon Burge <simonb@telstra.com.au>
From: Thor Lancelot Simon <tls@rek.tjls.com>
List: current-users
Date: 03/25/1999 19:43:38
On Fri, Mar 26, 1999 at 11:16:33AM +1100, Simon Burge wrote:
> Thor Lancelot Simon wrote:
> 
> > > * the first stage of our two-stage bootblocks has block numbers of the 2nd one
> > > hardcoded into it by the installboot program. You simply can't use a data
> > > moving FS like LFS with that.
> > 
> > I see that as a weakness in our bootblocks.  They can't cope with "/boot"
> > being moved, either, or with a defragmentation/optimization tool for FFS
> > like the ones Seltzer's proposed.
> 
> Since this on "current-users", and not "port-i386" (and possibly
> some others), you should be carefull what you say :-).  The new pmax
> bootblocks (for example) have a FFS implementation in stage 1 and
> doesn't rely on an installboot-type program.  The old single-stage pmax
> bootblocks could only read a.out kernels, but also had (the same) FFS
> implementation.

And so could the single-stage i386 bootblocks we switchted from some time
ago.  But if you're doing _that_, you can teach stage 1 about LFS (possibly
to the exclusion of FFS, in which case you just have a bootblock per
filesystem, no big deal) and it's still not an issue.

Thor