Re: SEUL: Partitioning

[Erik Walthinsen <omega@aracnet.com>]

> The idea of putting Linux in a loopback partition has a potential
> attractive property for some of the less adventurous computer users.

However, this ability hinges on the availability of a filesystem that can grow 
and shrink on demand.  To grow a filesystem isn't that hard, it's shrinking it 
that's a problem.  This would probably require hooks in the ext2fs kernel code 
so the defrag/shrink program simply figures out what to do and then tells the 
kernel to do the real work of moving files, so the fs driver never loses it's 
concept of the disk-state of the filesystem.  This allows the system to do 
things online.

That's another point...  The user should not be required to do anything in 
'maintainence mode', other than disaster recovery.  Currently, there are quite 
a few things that have to be done the hard way, in multiple steps (i.e. boot 
to DOS, defrag, run FIPS, repartition with DOS fdisk, then boot to linux and 
use that fdisk, etc. etc.) that actually can be done all at once, we just need 
the tools to do it with.

        Erik Walthinsen - Programmer, webmaster, 3D artist, etc.   __
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