Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2002 17:04:02 -0800 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: "Gary W. Swearingen" <swear@blarg.net> Cc: David Schultz <dschultz@uclink.Berkeley.EDU>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Why dual boot? Message-ID: <3C535202.9001ACA2@mindspring.com> References: <3C4FBE5C.2AE8C65@mindspring.com> <20020123114658.A514@lpt.ens.fr> <20020123223104.SM01952@there> <3C4FBE5C.2AE8C65@mindspring.com> <4.3.2.7.2.20020124213809.00e6e5d0@localhost> <20020125131659.GB7374@hades.hell.gr> <3C51CD33.4E69B204@mindspring.com> <001b01c1a635$636a4170$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <20020126003431.A77505@HAL9000.wox.org> <y4wuy46bza.uy4@localhost.localdomain>
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"Gary W. Swearingen" wrote: [ ... ] -- It'd be great to have an automatic multiple-diskizer, but I think there are better things to develop, mainly because I think the number of people who should use it would be small. Few (mostly desktop users) with M$Win installed can easily buy a cheap, small, even used, second disk and correctly install it with the master/slave jumpers, etc., working for a dedicated FreeBSD install. Few of them should risk voiding their warranty by installing the second disk. Very few of them would be willing to back up or able to restore their M$Win. Even those who ARE willing will spread the news that FreeBSD too their system off warranty if the system later blew out due to bugs or drained battery or other hardware failure and they were refused a replacement because the seal on their case was broken. Most of those few who can use a dedicated disk can't even at least get a good taste of FreeBSD by booting off a CDROM into a memory-based FreeBSD, since a read-only system is practically useless for any but toy use. -- 8-) 8-) 8-). > That experience could be greatly improved if someone would > make one of those systems that puts FreeBSD filesystems into M$Win files > (which has likely already been done), esp. if they could write some > M$Win code to pre-size the fs files and run the defragger before making > the FS in the file during the FreeBSD install. The original problem with this is that the FreeBSD FS stacking code doesn't work well enough to be able to do the Udo Walter "U-MSDOS" approach using an FS stacking layer to use a FAT-16 or FAT-32 FS. The current problem with this is that the FreeBSD NTFS code, which is what would have to be used for any new machine, since they come preinstalled with Windows XP these days, can't successfully write the disk. This is mostly a problem with the lack for write code in the FS, which in turn is because the FreeBSD VFS layer is not quite correctly organized to permit things like abort of log operations, and the lack of an "fsck" for NTFS to permit recovery by FreeBSD, following an improper shutdown. In other words, it's less work to make the multiboot work. 8-). -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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