Re: looped root filesystem

Daniel G. Linder (dlinder@zeus.webcentric.net)
Thu, 14 Aug 1997 14:33:03 -0400 (EDT)

"Miguel A.L. Paraz" <map@iphil.net> wrote:
> Is there any work being done, or is it practical at all, to
> use a loopback device for root? I'm thinking of making it easier
> to run Linux part-time on Windows machines; we create an ext2
> filesystem on the FAT/VFAT system, even make it contiguous, then
> use that as root.

Miguel,

Check out:
http://www.linuxhq.com/patch/20-p0153.html

--- From the page ---
This is a small patch to enable mounting of the root filesystem from a
looped file. So it's possible to have your ext2 root filesystem as a
single large file on an MSDOS partition and boot from
there, like this :

c:\linux> dir
loadlin.exe
vmlinuz
rootfs
c:\linux> loadlin vmlinuz root=/dev/hda1 looproot=/linux/rootfs rw

--- End of quote ---

This patch is for 2.0, and I do not know if it is compatible with the
latest 2.0.X kernels, but should work pretty well.

Dan

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