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Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2008 11:48:36 -0500
From: Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>
To: "David H. Lynch Jr." <dhlii@dlasys.net>
Subject: Re: Block devices
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On Thu, Feb 21, 2008 at 02:05:52AM -0500, David H. Lynch Jr. wrote:
>     Can I boot an initramfs kernel without a block device ?

Yes.

>     Can I write a filesystem driver for a flash device that does not
> require a block device ?

Yes.

>     Are their any examples of something even close ?

For that particular flash case there's just jffs2 in the kernel tree,
with some more flash filesystems under development.  You can of
course have network and in-memory filesystems aswell.