>
> As I see it, umsdos has two reasons for existance:
> 1) Allows you to quickly, easily, safely install Linux on a DOS machine,
> perhaps temporarily, without having to mess with fdisk & backup/restore.
> 2) Allows you to access linux files from dos, while running under dos rather
> that linux.
>
> A big disadvantage is that umsdos is supposedly very slow.
>
> How about this as an alternative/replacement for umsdos:
> 1) Under dos, create a large contiguous file--obviously this is a dos file
> in a dos partition.
> 2) Convince Linux to use this file as if it were a linux partition.
> 3) Do the normal linux things to it--specifically: mkfs & mkswap.
>
> When I worked on vax/vms years ago, we had a similar thing, it was called a
> "virtual disk"; the file in which it lived was called a "container file".
> (It's very similar to the CVS of drvspace and stacker). You could mount the
> virtual disk, format it, etc. just as if it was a real disk.
>
> This would provide us with the 1st advantage of umsdos, but also the
> performance, reliability, etc. of ext2 (or actually, any other linux
> filesystem). The 2nd advantage of umsdos (and I'm not sure how important it
> actually is) could be handled by the set of programs which access an ext2 fs
> from dos (I forget it's name).
>
> I think this would be fairly easy to do, and I'd be willing to work on it.
> Please tell me what you think about this--and if you think it's worth doing,
> any tips/tricks/shortcuts that might be valuable in making it work. BTW, I
> am thinking that this would NOT sit on top of msdos, as umsdos does, but
> rather would only access the msdos filesystem once, to find this container
> file and gets it's size and physical location.
Linux would still have to interpret DOS/FAT to find out the physical
positions of the file. The file can be fragmented. If you use DOS
defrag, LILO may cease to work (load kernel with BIOS disk
addresses).
>
> Regards,
> Ray Van Tassle
> rayvt@comm.mot.com
------------
Ulrich Windl Klinikum der Universitaet Regensburg
Rechenzentrum DV-med Franz-Josef-Strauss-Allee 11
Tel: +49 941 944-5879 D-93053 Regensburg
FAX: +49 941 944-5882
Just imagine my mail address were <Ulrich.Windl@rz.uni.r.de>...