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Date:      Thu, 24 Sep 1998 21:17:46 +0000 (GMT)
From:      Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com>
To:        cdillon@wolves.k12.mo.us (Chris Dillon)
Cc:        drussell@saturn-tech.com, tlambert@primenet.com, jflowers@ezo.net, luigi@labinfo.iet.unipi.it, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Booting from NT ?
Message-ID:  <199809242117.OAA17367@usr06.primenet.com>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.02A.9809241350530.16192-100000@duey.hs.wolves.k12.mo.us> from "Chris Dillon" at Sep 24, 98 01:53:35 pm

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> > > > You can BOOT FreeBSD (via NTLDR) off an NTFS parition.  FreeBSD
> > > > can't read the NTFS filesystem, of course (yet!), but you can
> > > > boot.  I don't think
> > .. 
> > > Actually, there is a R/O NTFS module for FreeBSD.  See the list
> > > archives.
> > 
> > Nifty!  Sometime I MUST start a page of "Neat things for FreeBSD that you
> > probably never new existed" for all these things I keep discovering!
> 
> It would be ultra-nifty if one could write to NTFS partitions, and even
> create/format them.  I could see possiblities of using this on a PicoBSD
> floppy to rebuild dead NT workstations, much like what I'm going to try
> to do for Win95 on FAT16 (I'll consider FAT32 as nonexistent.. it
> sucks).  :-)

We write FS images at Whistle, after a net-boot.  For an image, it's
not really relevent what the format of the thing is.

FreeBSD's VFS would need to change to be able to properly support
a journalling filesystem.  More specifically, the VOP_ABORTOP would
need to become real, and the cookie portion of VOP_READDIR would
have to go away, among other more minor tweaks.  It's no coincidence
that Margo's LFS code never worked quite right on FreeBSD, since
a log structured FS is very similar to a JFS in its needs for
transaction control.

The only saving grace here is that while it would be very hard to
wedge a writable NTFS into an unmodified FreeBSD VFS, it would be
almost impossible to wedge it into an unmodified Linux VFS (their
NTFS implementation is read-only, as well).


					Terry Lambert
					terry@lambert.org
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.

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