Read only filesystem size issues.

Adi Linden [email protected]
Sun, 17 Dec 2000 12:26:46 -0600 (CST)


Hi Dean,

I went with your suggestions and edited pwl_target_load accordingly.

> Yep, you are correct. I didn't notice the mount above. 
> Reiserfs looks interesting for the entire filesystem as there are many
> small files in my application that each eat up 1K worth of storage. If
> ext2fs supported fragments, I'd probably be able to reduce storage
> requirements by about 30%. It appears that reiserfs may be able to make
> a similar savings. Have you any experience with reiserfs?

I've been looking at reiserfs primarily for it's ability to be shutdown
without corruption. I must say I don't know much about filesystems. I've
read that a journalling filesystems keeps a history record of some sort
that allows system boot without filesystem check, risk of corruption, etc.
If I understand right reiserfs doesn't need any additional tools to like
fsck if a filesystem is used read/write.

I want to include reiserfs. But it will require several things:

- Embedded kernel with reiserfs support
- Development machine with reiserfs enabled kernel
- Modifications of the pwl_target_load functions, i.e. additional targets
  with reiserfs.

This is a planned addition but without any guarantee or deadline at this
point.

> Being able to override the creation of the init scripts would allow me
> to return much closer to the standard pwl package. Most of the recent
> changes to my build have been accomplished by modifying the pwl_target*
> scripts.

I am working on some pwlconfig changes today. I hope to add the initscript
flag to pwl_defaults.

Another issue I want to resolve is the many questions I get from newcomers
about missing packages. I will check for packages and if none exist I want
to give a prompt with an option to extract all rpms to packages when
pwlconfig is initially run.

> Your default init scripts run ldconfig, if it exists, on every target
> boot. That is what prompted my comment. You are correct that the

This is correct. Leftovers from when PeeWeeLinux started to take shape. I
left it just because there might be circumstances when an embedded system
contains ldconfig is is required to use it for whatever mysterious reason.
I.e. development without using pwl_target_load to build a target drive.

> This would be wonderful!! I'm attempting every trick I can think of to
> conserve system resources. RAM is where I am currently focusing on.

There's a devfs backport I am looking at adding to the 2.2.18 kernel.

So once these changes to pwlconfig are done I will release 0.53.24.
Hopefully there'll be only minor changes if any and it will turn into 0.60
to reflect a stable distribution.

Then I can start adding packages, etc. I still have to come to grips with
version numbering. Some way of distinguishing between beta releases and
stable releases. I'd also like the version number to reflect when packages
have changed rather than pwlconfig changes. Any suggestions are welcome
here!

TTYL,
Adi

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