In article <oeTp1cq00aw3A45UdS@andrew.cmu.edu> fl0p+@andrew.cmu.edu (Frank T Lofaro) writes:
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>I'd like to see if anyone has any answers to these questions.
>
>1. Does 0.97 support an ext fs as root? (I'm pretty sure it does, but
>before I do something drastic like re-mkfs, I want to be *very* sure)

        Yes it does. Actually, it supports any known fs (minix, ext and
msdos) as root.

        However, although the ext fs is currently included in linux, it
is still in tests. I think that the major bugs in it have been fixed
but I can't promise that it is bug-free ... I don't recommend using it
for crucial data and especially for the root fs.

        See also my answer to the question 5.

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>
>       [Questions 2 and 3 deleted]
>
>4. Does the ext fs support separate atime, mtime, and ctime? It would be
>nice if it did.

        No it doesn't. When I have used the minix fs code to implement
the ext fs, I have not noticed that the modification time only was stored
on disk so the ext fs currently acts the same way :-(

        I think that it will change in the near future (see the next
answer).

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>5. What's the chance of a newer version of ext fs being incompatible
>with the current one?

        Well, the ext fs is going to evolve soon to support bigger blocks
and other enhancements. I will try very hard to keep the fs structure
compatible with the current one but I can't promise that it will be
possible (for instance, if atime, mtime and ctime are stored on disk,
it means that the inode structure will change so, unless some code is
added to support "old ext fs", there will be compatibility problems).

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>6. Where is the mount which supports mounting ms-dos partitions?
>(please no flames, I'm mostly using ms-dos for networking, only because
>I have to :|)

        If you use the mount command from rootimage 0.96, you can mount
a msdos fs by using :
        mount -t msdos /dev/hdXX /dirname

        Actually, you can use this mount for every supported fs type.

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>
>       [Questions 7 to 12 deleted]
>
>Sorry for such a long list and possibly some FAQ's, but I've waited
>until now to see if the information was already being discussed on the
>net. Maybe posting a current FAQ every week might help a little in
>enlightening us.
>
>Thanks for any help you can give.
>
>Linux is a great OS. Keep up the good work! Hopefully soon enough will
>be implemented and stable for Linux to go the next big step, to version
>1.0. I'd say once we have full networking and the fs taken care of, and
>everything packaged together uniformly like the sc.tamu.edu release, and
>worked out the few remaining minor bugs we will be pretty much there.
>I'm glad the version numbering wasn't done hastily, like in the case of
>Coherent 1.0. Anyway, speaking of bugs, there doesn't seem to be too
>many, the only one that really bit me was that setterm doesn't fix the
>aftermath of control-N.


--

        Remy Card
        card@masi.ibp.fr