This is an OpenPGP/MIME signed message (RFC 2440 and 3156)
--------------enigD671285AF117953E0BB8237B
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Martin,

>>It occurs to me that GNU/Linux's mount command has an option that allows
>>you to byte-swap a volume...
> 
> You probably misunderstood both the mount option and the problem.

You're right. I hadn't read the latest couple of messages (where the
revelation about the binary passwd database was mentioned). Oops!

> If you mount a local filesystem (say on a floppy) that has been created
> on a machine with different endianess, you need something to take care
> of the file system endianess (NetBSD does this automagically). This is
> just the file system structure, not the contents of the files stored in
> the filesystem.

Right... this is why I was confused about his ability to boot! ;)

> There is no magic solution to this. You can not blindly swap all bytes around
> in files stored inside the filesystem unless you exactly do know the structure
> of the binary data.

Agreed. The only way to get around this would be to have a magic number
at the beginning of the file that you could use to detect the endianness
of the file, and then (potentially) swap bytes accordingly. Or, just
always use network byte order or whatever.

-chris

--------------enigD671285AF117953E0BB8237B
Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc"
Content-Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="signature.asc"

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFDkF5C9CaO5/Lv0PARAuwDAJ9wGlKNYj05rG2yjE2vP8GCqXULEgCdFV4G
XqQ1JiJdKRT25GCPIXK1q4M=
=iAmO
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

--------------enigD671285AF117953E0BB8237B--