I and others, showed how a NetBSD kernel could be saved on the root of a =
MSDOS drive and booted into NetBSD and exists as a diskless workstation.

With the advent of longfile names on a MSDOS formatted drive, and =
NetBSD's ability  to read them, what are the odds that I can put a =
NetBSD kernel on my root drive, add /sbin, /bin, /etc, etc. directories =
to the drive and populate them with NetBSD binaries and boot NetBSD?

I realize I would have to modify /etc/fstab.
I would probably have to disklabel the drive so that NetBSD could mount =
it.
I have no idea if I would have to do anything to the kernel config =
except add msdos file system support and change the config option to =
read...
config	netbsd root on msdos swap on (no idea)


Things that will be interesting to observe.
With the absence of permissions, how will NetBSD react?  Which brings me =
to a question.  Since this is going to be potentially possible, is there =
a possibility that special permission files could be generated in =
different directories, that would remain hidden while in use by NetBSD?  =
This way a user can set rwx and ownership.

Even if I am able to get the system to start booting, I suspect the =
performance will be rather poor, but hey, it's got to be better than =
Linux's pathetically slow booting DOS version.

Since doing something like this is theoretically possible, I would love =
to be able to create a i.e. /NetBSD directory off the root of my root =
MSDOS drive and populate it with all of my NetBSD binaries.  There is =
the chroot command in NetBSD, but I think it is only useful after the =
boot is finished.

jam