On Sun, Jul 15, 2012 at 8:30 PM, Duncan <1i5t5.dun...@cox.net> wrote: > Rich Freeman posted on Sun, 15 Jul 2012 14:48:55 -0400 as excerpted: > >> Giving it a little thought, the simplest tmpfs-based root would be one >> that defines a tarball as a the root. The system would create a tmpfs, >> extract the tarball to it, and then use the existing fstab-sys module to >> mount stuff on top of that. This gives you the option of actually >> putting some content in the tarball, or just storing an empty directory >> structure in it. A tarball would let you set permissions/etc and be a >> bit more generic than writing a custom script. If you wrote a module to >> do this I wouldn't be suprised if upstream let you merge it. You'd just >> need to define some kind of sane syntax for it >> (root=TAR=path...to...tarball - though how a path works with nothing >> mounted you'd have to define). Maybe you define the tarball at >> initramfs creation (as is done with fstab.sys and mdadm.conf). > > Tarball is an interesting idea I hadn't considered. At first blush I > like it. =:^) > > Thinking in that direction does stimulate yet another idea, tho. What > about a squashfs root? AFAIK squashfs is read-only at use time, thus > enforcing actually mounting something else to write anything, eliminating > many of the down sides of sticking with the initial ramfs root, but it > would allow the same flexibility in terms of sticking whatever into it at > create-time, while only taking the memory necessary for what's actually > stuck in it at create-time. I /think/ it's swappable, too, which would > give me some flexibility in terms of letting more stuff be added at > create-time without having to worry about it being locked in memory. And > I think squashfs is reasonably tested territory for this sort of thing, > given its use for live-media, etc. And it's in mainline now, too, which > is nice. =:^) I'll have to do some research and think about that a bit > more... > > Definitely thanks for the tarball idea, as otherwise I'd probably have > not got out of my "box" and thought about squashfs. I'm probably missing > its downsides ATM, but you still broke my thinking out of the box!
This is sounding closer and closer to an on-disk liveCD. -- :wq
