Re: SEUL: Partitioning

[Thomas Molesworth <thomas@bass.almac.co.uk>]

On Mon, 30 Jun 1997, Erik Walthinsen wrote:

--cut--
> Maybe...  That has it's own issues.  That entails a complete group dedicated 
> to doing evil M$ things.  There are two types of demos (of the type you're 
> talking about): movie and interactive.  A movie wouldn't be hard, an 
> interactive one would have to be done as a trial install.

I _do not_ volunteer for writing M$ stuff. The movie-style option would be
ok, just use MPEGs or FLIs (with a running commentary by Linus, cool!)

> OTOH, it might be possible to, as someone suggested before, use loadlin or 
> simliar to load both the kernel and a full root image into RAM from within 
> Windoze or DOS, shoot Win in the head, and boot to the root image.  You then 
> have the thing run off either a live image on the CD or use a userfs-based 
> program I've been thinking about.  The idea there is to "mount" a RPM or dpkg 
> file as a filesystem, either mounting it using IFS or just symlink things into 
> place.  That means you can run an entire system off a root image that 
> virtually mounts all the packages from the original package files.

Mounting RPMs sounds complicated - would this work? (wouldn't that result in
about 200 filesystems mounted?)

> > in summary, marketing wins.  i suggest doing things in the following order:
> > 
> > 1. make a product, and make it the real thing.
> >    the top priority should be that a full-blown, fast,
> >    what-linux-was-meant-to-be installation will work well.
> Most definitely.  The demo/trail thing should be a very low-priroity thing, 
> driven by marketing if anyone...

Agreed.

> In the overall scheme of things, doing a loopback install would be a bad idea. 
>  The investment involved in doing an install to a loopback file is equivalent 
> to a full install (well, almost), and if we can do a complete run-of-CD 
> 'demo', no one will want to do a loopback install.

That's the point, the loopback option should be regarded as equivalent to
repartitioning. Think of it as an alternative to umsdos. Running off CD
still requires somewhere to put symlinks, doesn't it?

> > 3. extra stuff.
> >    maybe some of you really dig this loopback idea, and think you can
> >    code it.  if so, go for it.  more extensions to linux are always good
> >    to have around.
> EXACTLY!!!  Just because something may not be "official sanction" by this 
> project doesn't mean it shouldn't/won't ever be done.  If you want to do 
> something anyway, go for it, just keep in contact with the main group.  If you 
> can "robustify" (nifty word, I invented it a few days ago... ;-) the code, it 
> might indeed make it's way into SEUL eventually.

OK, I'll go do that.

--
Thomas Molesworth            (thomas@bass.almac.co.uk)

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