diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/filesystems/romfs.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/filesystems/romfs.txt | 13 |
1 files changed, 6 insertions, 7 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/romfs.txt b/Documentation/filesystems/romfs.txt index 7df713201..2d2a7b2a1 100644 --- a/Documentation/filesystems/romfs.txt +++ b/Documentation/filesystems/romfs.txt @@ -1,7 +1,6 @@ - ROMFS - ROM FILE SYSTEM -This is a quite dumb, read only filesystem, mainly for initial ram +This is a quite dumb, read only filesystem, mainly for initial RAM disks of installation disks. It has grown up by the need of having modules linked at boot time. Using this filesystem, you get a very similar feature, and even the possibility of a small kernel, with a @@ -29,13 +28,13 @@ However, the main purpose of romfs is to have a very small kernel, which has only this filesystem linked in, and then can load any module later, with the current module utilities. It can also be used to run some program to decide if you need SCSI devices, and even IDE or -floppy drives can be loaded later if you use the "initrd" -- initial -ram disk -- feature of the kernel. This would not be really news +floppy drives can be loaded later if you use the "initrd"--initial +RAM disk--feature of the kernel. This would not be really news flash, but with romfs, you can even spare off your ext2 or minix or maybe even affs filesystem until you really know that you need it. For example, a distribution boot disk can contain only the cd disk -drivers (and possibly the SCSI drivers), and the ISO filesystem +drivers (and possibly the SCSI drivers), and the ISO 9660 filesystem module. The kernel can be small enough, since it doesn't have other filesystems, like the quite large ext2fs module, which can then be loaded off the CD at a later stage of the installation. Another use @@ -148,7 +147,7 @@ please contact me. However, think twice before wanting me to add features and code, because the primary and most important advantage of this file system is the small code. On the other hand, don't be alarmed, I'm not getting that much romfs related mail. Now I can -understand why Avery wrote poems in the arcnet docs to get some more +understand why Avery wrote poems in the ARCnet docs to get some more feedback. :) romfs has also a mailing list, and to date, it hasn't received any @@ -167,7 +166,7 @@ I have never found this limiting, but others might. one would want to write _anything_ to a file system, he still needs a writable file system, thus negating the size advantages. Possible solutions: implement write access as a compile-time option, or a new, -similarly small writable filesystem for ram disks. +similarly small writable filesystem for RAM disks. - Since the files are only required to have alignment on a 16 byte boundary, it is currently possibly suboptimal to read or execute files |