Subject: Re: [vserver] ramFS Host
From: Raoul Bhatia [IPAX] <r.bhatia@ipax.at>
Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2008 16:06:46 +0100

as it is possible to boot a whole linux system from network with no local
harddisk (pxe should be the keyword), i see no issue with that besides
being a little more complicated for updates :) (as you need to patch the
file on the server and re-pack it - afairc)

please tell us about your progress!

cheers,
raoul

On Thu, 3 Jan 2008 08:30:42 -0600, "Michael S. Zick" <mszick@morethan.org>
wrote:
> Group,
> 
> A somewhat abstract question today ...
> 
> The usual protocol for a kernel booting with an initial ramFS (early
> userspace);
> is for the setup and whatever initialization be done in the ramFS image;
> then switch_root (which removes the initial ramFS contents) to the "run
> time"
> storage media (yea, everyone here knows that) ...
> 
> But the size of a truly minimal VServer host image (logging, sshd, ntpd,
> network tables)
> is not very big (target system is a mini-laptop (EeePC) with at least
> 0.5Gb ram) - -
> Why "switch_root" for the host?
> Why not just bring up the first (most likely only) user context as a
> vserver on the
> run-time media - let the host context continue to run in ramFS?
> 
> Technically, it looks like it should work - -
> Anybody tried this sort of setup?  Any practical problems encountered?
> Of course, this setup would hold a few Mbytes of disk buffers out of the
> pool,
> but the machine has a lot of ram, I don't think they would be missed.
> 
> Mike
-- 
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DI (FH) Raoul Bhatia M.Sc.          email.          r.bhatia@ipax.at
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