And here the question: How is it simpler to maintain? squashfs is a read only file system, so you can't change things directly. Same as in initramfs: You need a copy of the root file system tree to put in your changes, then you need to create your new root file system (squashfs on one hand, cpio archiv on the other hand). Then you need to install your new root file system to the flash. How can you feel this being simpler to maintain?
A real filesystem (squashfs or otherwise) is independent from the kernel. This gives you more flexibility. You don't have to reboot to test it in a real live working environment. You can develop it in an emulator to avoid cross-compiling. You can copy the archive around and mount it as is on another machine. You can keep your userland firmware and your kernel entirely separate, and even perform live firmware upgrades. Additionally, disk or even flash is cheaper than RAM. If you have a little mass storage, you can store a bajillion utilities or recovery stuff on it, and fail gracefully if your remote server is down, whereas you probably don't want to keep too many things in an initramfs. -- Laurent _______________________________________________ busybox mailing list [email protected] http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
