Mail Archives: opendos/1997/02/09/00:41:21
On Tue, 4 Feb 1997, Brian Dukes wrote:
> On Tue, 4 Feb 1997 09:10:07 -0500 (EST), you wrote:
>
>
> >> To be honest, I can't see that its going to be practical to move from
> >> one IFS to another nilly-willy just by changing an instruction in the
> >> CONFIG.SYS, for one the data stored under one IFS would be fairly
> >> incompatible with the data stored under another .. and therefore, in
> >> order to switch between filing systems you would probably ZAP the
> >> partition first!
> >
> >Ok, well you use FAT then. We will use ext2. Everyone will be
> >happy. :o)
>
> Woooo... hold your horses just one cotton pickin' minute there Mike!
>
> What I am saying is that switching *nilly-willy* between IFS's on a
> machine is not necessarily practical. That does not mean for one
> moment that I prefer to use or even like to use FAT ... I can see the
> benefit of having other IFS's made available to OD, I just don't
> think its going to be terribly practical having the IFS load from
> config.sys with an IFS=ext2.ifs type line. If someone then changes
> that line in the config.sys to IFS=vfat.ifs what the hell will
> happen to the information already on that partition??
I'm not familiar with the phrase "nilly-willy". I don't imply
that you "want" to use FAT, nor that you like it. I wouldn't put
a line in config.sys like that either. I would use a mechanism
like Linux does. ie: MOUNT/UMOUNT, ETC\FSTAB. If one messes up
their FSTAB, then they wont necessarily see all of their
partitions without manually mounting them. This could require
booting from floppy to fix their err. All programs called by the
booting procedure (until you get a prompt) should be on the ROOT
filesystem. Since the root filesystem MUST be built into the
kernel, then ALL files will be readable. If one of your
partitions doesn't mount right, then you just need to edit your
FSTAB file. Simple as that. No chance in hell of toasting a
partition.
If you try and mount an FAT partition as HPFS, it WONT screw up
anything. You will get an error, and thats it. It would be
fairly simple to have the MOUNT utility check the partition type
and do an AUTOMOUNT anyways. The Linux fdisk command lists all
known partition types, so this info could be used in a DOS MOUNT
command.
The CONFIG.SYS file is (and should be) used for configuring BOOT
time options to the operating system kernel, and nothing more.
Anything that can be done after the OS is up and running *SHOULD*
be done this way. If you MUST have another partition other than
the root partition available for something in your AUTOEXEC.BAT,
simply run MOUNT as the first command in that file. I fail to
see how their could be any problems with this method.
> Please don't put me in the *I love FAT* camp, I don't belong there!!
> <G>
I put a smiley on the line. Perhaps you didn't see it.
Mike A. Harris | http://blackwidow.saultc.on.ca/~mharris
Computer Consultant | My webpage has moved and my address has changed.
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mailto:mharris AT blackwidow DOT saultc DOT on DOT ca
LINUX: Lost access to your keyboard after a game? Email me for fix.
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