I have no devices on my system except RAM and FLASH.  I am booting the
kernel 
out of FLASH and the first time I run it is expecting a file system ( which
should be 
optional IMHO ).  So I can create a dos boot block in the RAM and let the OS

continue.  I was just interested if there is a method to either booting
NetBSD without
a file system or formatting an MSDOS Ram based file system on the fly.

Kyle

-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Gilbert [mailto:chris@paradox.demon.co.uk]
Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2001 3:44 PM
To: Matt Thomas; Unice, Kyle; 'port-arm32@netbsd.org'
Subject: Re: Ramdisk & MSDOS file system


On Thursday 22 February 2001 10:30 pm, Matt Thomas wrote:
> At 02:22 PM 2/22/2001 -0800, Unice, Kyle wrote:
> >It appears that when one declares a memory based disk and then tries to
> >mount it using the msdos file system, that the mounting expects to see a
> >formatted DOS volume with an appropriate boot block... This makes sense
> >unless you are running a ramdisk as your first and only disk drive ( at
> >least for now ).  Is there a standard procedure for formating a MSDOS
> > volume created on a ramdisk ?  I didn't see an entry point for such in
> > the MSDOS vfs code.
>
> once needs to create it first and then place in the kernel using
> mdsetimage.  newfs_msdos shoud be able to make you one.

A good place to look for an example of all this is in the distrib/arm32 dir.

The install kernels have space set aside for the ramdisk, and default to 
using them as the root disk.  AFAIR the ramdisks are actually ffs, and are 
created using /dev/vnd and vnconfig etc.

This is perhaps unique to arm32 in that we expect to be able to load a
kernel 
including a ramdisk for install.  Possibly the reason behind this being that

the original arm32 port was going from RISC-OS, so already had disks mounted

etc.  Although I do believe you can use floppies to for a root disk...

Cheers,
Chris