Re: SEUL: FIPS

[George Bonser <grep@oriole.sbay.org>]

First of all, FIPS only works on msdos FAT filesystems.  It will not
resize OS/2 HPFS filesystems or Win95 filesystems (I dont think).

FIPS ONLY resizes MSDOS filesystems.  Also, FIPS does not guarantee itself
to even work in all cases.  It tells you right at the start that the ONLY
safe way to resize a partition is to back up the software, reformat,
repartition, and restore. 

Rather than trying to be all things to all people and attempt to learn how
to resize multi-boot system partitions (what do we do with a system that
has SCO, Solaris x86, FreeBSD, or OS/2 in the first partition), I say we
should leave that up to the vendors of disk utilities and concern
ourselves with making a clean install.

Trying to port FIPS to linux is not only a waste of time (The filesystem
it handles is a shrinking percentage of the installed base) but it exposes
us to problems if it blows someone's system up.



On Tue, 17 Feb 1998, Mark Stone wrote:

> On Tue, 17 Feb 1998, William T Wilson wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, 18 Feb 1998, Jeffrey wrote:
> > 
> > > Maybe I'm weird but I don't have a copy of dos. This would
> > > require an OEM to buy a copy of dos for every computer he
> > > put SEUL on. -Jeff
> > 
> > Obviously, computers without DOS do not need FIPS in the first place.
> > 
> > 
> Is this obivous? When Be releases its Intel port next month, I'd like to
> download it and install it, just to play around with it and see what this
> new OS is like.
> 
> The best way for me to do this would be without having to delete and
> reinstall any of my current software. Under Win 95 I can use FIPS to
> resize my partion. But I'll need some space from my Linux partition as
> well. So I'll just use Linux-FIPS to resize my Linux partition.... damn, I
> forgot. There IS no Linux-FIPS, because in a world without DOS, I'm not
> supposed to need it.
> 
> Mark
> 
> 
> 

George Bonser 
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