Re: PUBLIC CHALLENGE: (was RE: devfs again, (was RE: USB device

Alexander Viro (viro@math.psu.edu)
Fri, 8 Oct 1999 04:23:42 -0400 (EDT)


On 8 Oct 1999, david parsons wrote:

> In article <linux.kernel.Pine.GSO.4.10.9910072322120.10704-100000@weyl.math.psu.edu>,
> Alexander Viro <viro@math.psu.edu> wrote:
> >
> >
> >On 7 Oct 1999, david parsons wrote:
> >
> >> - allows you to run a Linux kernel on a filesystem that does not
> >> have Unix semantics.
> >
> >Show me a single fs that
> > a) is implemented in Linux
> > b) supports ownership/permissions (critical for /etc and /sbin at
> >the very least)
>
> Really? I'm afraid your conservatism exceeds mine.
>
> You don't need ownership, except as root, on a filesystem to boot
> a Linux+devfs system. It might not resemble a ``standard'' Unix
> system, but one of the spiffy things about a Unix kernel is that
> it can be adapted to a wide variety of environment.

Ho-hum... /tmp without sticky bit is an interesting animal, not to
mention the nice stuff in /var (sparse files), /usr/bin (suid/sgid not to
root), ditto for long names, ditto for cases-sensitivity, etc.

> > c) doesn't support devices
> > d) has sufficiently stable Linux implementation.
>
> msdos.
>
> Dunno about vfat; the msdos filesystem is good enough for the
> purposes that I'd want to put it to.

What version are you talking about? 2.0? IIRC it still has data-corrupting
races. 2.2? Thanks, but I'm not really sure that it's rock-solid. 2.3?
Geez, guess what I'm doing right now? Yup, testing the (supposedly) fixed
version of msdosfs (sheesh... and I wasn't even drunk when I made that
typo).
BTW, _what_ are those purposes? I'm really curious.
Al

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