Baslinux mailing list

[3aoo-cvfd AT dea.spamcon.org]

James Miller wrote:
>
> So FAT16 actually turns out to be something of an 
> advantage over ext2, right? 

Not for BL3.  The data in fs.img is still arranged in an
ext2 filesystem.  So FAT16 plays no part in that.

(i.e., more efficient use of HD space).

No, ext2 is more efficient than FAT16.  ext2 certainly
does "waste" space for inodes (which FAT16 doesn't), and 
that does mean FAT16 has more space for real data.  So,
if you have just one file that fills the entire filesystem,
there is more room for it on FAT16 than ext2.

However, in the real world, there are usually many files,
some of them quite small.  In that case, FAT16 wastes far
more space with clusters than ext2 does with inodes.

> Basically the whole filesystem, filestructure, data and 
> everything else are in fs.img, right?

Yes.  That's why you can simply dd it to a HD partition of
the same size.

> It would be the sort of baslinux.gz of prior BL's, wouldn't it?

Yes.  It is actually possible to gzip fs.img, rename it
baslinux.gz and boot it to a 15mb ramdisk.  But you need 
a special kernel for that (the BL3 kernel has the standard 
4mb ramdisk limit).  

If I do a two-floppy version of BL3, it will probably boot
to a 5mb ramdisk (I will have to recompile the kernel with
the larger ramdisk size).

Cheers,
Steven