[rescue] Biggest drives (and SVM) in a U60?

Phil Stracchino phil.stracchino at speakeasy.net
Tue May 23 12:47:49 CDT 2006


Mike Meredith wrote:
> On Sat, 20 May 2006 23:14:10 -0400 (EDT), der Mouse wrote:
> 
>>>Boot filesystem?  Solaris doesn't have a boot filesystem as distinct
>>
>>NetBSD certainly does; I use it regularly, on sparc and i386 both.
>>this booter extracts the kernel from a filesystem.  This filesystem is
>>the one I was calling the "boot filesystem".  This does not need to
>>bear any particular relationship to the one which is mounted as the
>>root filesystem; while the root FS defaults to the boot FS, it can be
> 
> 
> Ah! Personally I wouldn't call that a 'boot filesystem' but only because
> I'd encountered those SVR4 variants previously. Instead of implementing
> UFS (or more complex filesystem types) in the boot loader, the loader
> understands a much simpler filesystem and passes control to the kernel
> before any great complexity is needed.
> 
> As it happens, Linux implements the UnixWare boot filesystem in about
> 1000 lines (including Makefile), Minix is about 2000 lines, and UFS
> about 6000 lines. 
> 
> Whilst it was a nifty idea (and would solve Sun's 'how to boot off a ZFS
> filesystem' by cheating), I guess it would make more sense to use your
> meaning.

There is much I grok not about ZFS.  What is so conceptually different
about booting off a ZFS filesystem?  Or, to put it another way, what is
it about a ZFS filesystem that makes it difficult to boot from without
cheating?


-- 
 Phil Stracchino                     Landline: 603-886-3518
 phil.stracchino at speakeasy.net         Mobile: 603-216-7037
 Renaissance Man, Unix generalist, Perl hacker, Free Stater



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