SEUL: Loopback interface: an acceptable compromise (I Hope)

[jfm2@club-internet.fr]

Having a complete file system including / on the loopback interface
will give us many problems, one of them is that it probably requires a
kernel patch.

But the idea of allowing people to skip the fdisk part is a good idea.
I suggested UMSDOS but we all know the performance issues involved
both in time and space.

I think the best would be to combine both things: we put / on an
UMSDOS file system, but /home /var and /usr on the loopback interface,
and use a DOS (ie outside of loopback) file for swap.

Because only a limited number of files (those on /) use the DOS
filesystem we avoid too much wasted space due to 32K clusters.  And
the loopback interface used on the vast majority of files is certainly
faster than UMSDOS, specially if the DOS file supporting the Linux FS
is not fragmented.

This way we allow the user wanting to try Linux not needing to
repartition (so he is more likely to try), we avoid spending resources
on kernel hacking and we still have a reasonably efficient solution.

If you reply please CC to my personal address: I am unsubscribing from
the list during my holidays.

-- 
			Jean Francois Martinez

==================== The Linux.  Use the Linux, Luke! =======================

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