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Subject: Re: Interest in DOC and YAFFS? --> YAFFS bootloading
From: Russ Dill <Russ.Dill@asu.edu>
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Date: 24 Sep 2002 11:47:43 -0700
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> > cramfs is a read only filesystem not an archive format like zip or tar
> > so you do not have to copy the data into another filesystem to use it.
> > You use cramfs instead of initrd+filesystem.
> 
> That isn't really the issue here.  We're talking about using gzip'd
> ext2 versus cramfs to do initrd.  The thing is that in my tests,
> cramfs images are larger than compressed ext2 images.  Not what I
> would expect.

if you are talking about an initrd, then the features of cramfs aren't
quite as usefull, as the whole thing will be loaded into ram anyway. On
the other side:

A cramfs will always be exactly as small as it needs to be, no guessing
on an image size. cramfs is created by population, not by making an
image, formatting it, mounting it loopback, and then copying files.

incedentally, I have a copy of mkcramfs with device table support (as
seen in mkfs.jffs2) as well as permission squashing, so that a cramfs
image can be made withoutt root (complete with suid root programs, and
/dev entries)