From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-ID: <b18fa177d74fff456f049fe743f3db69@quanstro.net>
From: erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net>
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 2009 08:30:37 -0400
To: 9fans@9fans.net
In-Reply-To: <13426df10908272223u3c6238c8o404081a9620c6219@mail.gmail.com>
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Subject: Re: [9fans] new 9atom.iso
Topicbox-Message-UUID: 59a95d44-ead5-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025

> So the FAT partition is good when you want to interoperate. But as you
> point out, it's kind of 1/2 of a real fat partition, which means
> sometimes, even if it looks ok in vista or whatever, it's not really
> ok. It's not really possible to fit a true FAT file system handler in
> a 512 byte pbs. The Plan 9 pbs (and I assume most of them)  are really
> a "find a file by name, get the offset, and just start loading
> contiguous data form whatever is at that offset in the partition until
> done". That's why there are things like install_grub, or lilo, or
> other such tools. If you delete and replace 9load and it ends up
> discontiguous, well, you may not be able to boot, hence the need to
> sometimes remove and replace all the files in the FAT.

two points, the contiguous requirement is part of the microsoft
standard:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/66530/en-us
so i think it's a bit unfair to say this is "1/2 of a real fat partition".

also, with dossrv, chmod +al will, if possible convert any file
into a bootable file.

removing all the files is somewhat of a hacky workaround, and
dos format kind of beats around the bush.  you tell it how
much system space to reserve, rather than which files are
system files.

> It may well be in the long term that
> the best way to remove 9load is to make Plan 9 grub-bootable.

that doesn't sound very appealing.  what advantages does grub have?
would you require linux to have plan 9?

- erik