In article <1993Jun2.120140@cs.man.ac.uk>, chardi@cs.man.ac.uk (Ian Chard) 
writes:
quoted text
> Before I buy & install DOS 6, is it possible to mount (or even read) a 
doubled,
quoted text
> Stacked, SuperStored etc. DOS partition from Linux?
> 
> Ian.
> 
> -- 
>
Mount, perhaps. Read, certainly not. If I understand it correctly, the
compression system generates a huge compressed file which, though the magic
of memory resident drivers, looks to the DOS user as a regular DOS filesystem. 
All of your data would be contained within that file. You might be able to 
see that file once you mounted the partition (along with perhaps a few 
bootstrap programs of some kind) but you would have no way to access any of 
the data in it. Modifying the Linux msdos filesystem code may seem like
the solution to this problem, but there's a caveat: I don't know for sure
that Microsloth's DoubleSpace and Stac's Stacker use the same exact
compression system. Plus, there are probably other systems out there. The
trouble is that once someone decides to add support from one kind of
compression system, there will be all sorts of people begging for support
of all the other systems, which will drive the Linux msdos filesystem
developers crazy I'm sure. 

Alright, I'll get down off my soapbox now. :)

-Bill Paul
ghod@drycas.club.cc.cmu.edu