Hi HPA and Joao, support for EXT3 in the kernel would indeed be large/complex.
Only supporting EXT3 READS already would take circa 10 kB of code, taking the size of the EXT2/3/4 GRUB module as example. I like MEMDISK bootable ramdisk style: MEMDISK can be booted by boot loaders which are able to boot Linux, and it can use any diskimage accessible by such boot loaders, including an image on EXT3 disks. Boot loaders either pre-compute a list of sectors to read files or load extra driver modules, which only have to support reading and which are not kept in RAM. Regarding the idea to have the kernel "natively boot from a RAMDISK in HIGH MEMORY which would NOT be A: or C: ... Well, on modern computers it should not be a problem to "hog" the drive letter of the A: floppy drive - you probably have at most ONE real floppy next to that ramdisk anyway and letter B: is still free :-) So in that sense, MEMDISK is ok for me. A ramdisk is often very small in RAM, so I think the benefit of compiling one into the kernel would be small compared to simply using pre-existing 3rd party ramdisks like MEMDISK. However, for the fans of really tiny settings, have a look at: http://www.rayer.g6.cz/romos/romose.htm This project features a "bios" version of the FreeDOS kernel, by booting the kernel from a 63 kB virtual floppy. The module including the floppy takes 64 kB in the option ROM area, so you could compare it to booting FreeDOS from UMB ramdisk ;-) In totally unrelated notes, I think it would be cool if the FreeDOS kernel could parse GPT PARTITION TABLES and find FAT partitions in them. And I think it might be interesting to be able to read files from the root dir of ISO9660 media if I/O is provided by BIOS ElTorito calls: That way, the kernel could load config sys and a CD/DVD driver after some special boot sector has loaded the kernel directly from CD/DVD :-) Cheers, Eric PS: I admit that the last idea is similar to having read-only EXT3 support in the kernel, but I believe ISO takes << 10 kB. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Site24x7 APM Insight: Get Deep Visibility into Application Performance APM + Mobile APM + RUM: Monitor 3 App instances at just $35/Month Monitor end-to-end web transactions and take corrective actions now Troubleshoot faster and improve end-user experience. Signup Now! http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=267308311&iu=/4140 _______________________________________________ Freedos-kernel mailing list Freedos-kernel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-kernel
