On Wed, 29 Dec 1999, Simon Burge wrote:

> This is a sort-of-interesting point for another reason - at the moment
> you need to be root to build a release.  What would be good is an
> mtools-like frontend for FFS so that you don't need to create a vnd to
> build the memory disk filesystem for the install kernel.  Hmm, do we
> support root on an MSDOS/FAT filesystem?  There's nothing to say the the
> install kernels that have a memory disk need to have FFS on them...
> 
> Of course there are other things like setting owner/group/perms inside
> of the generated release tar files, but this shouldn't be too hard...

For an install kernel (a kernel using a memory disk root filesystem),
you're right. I think there's been some interest in it. Like some variant
of tar which would use an ffs as the output format.

For boot floppies, usually you also need to install boot blocks. I'm not
sure how well that would work without the filesystem being mounted from a
vnd..

Take care,

Bill