Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!decwrl!labrea!rutgers!im4u!ut-sally!utah-cs!utah-gr!stride!stride1!mitch
From: mitch@stride1.UUCP (Thomas P. Mitchell)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Read Only Root FS (was: Jerry Pournelle on UNIX)
Message-ID: <708@stride.Stride.COM>
Date: 13 Jan 88 00:01:19 GMT
References: <1495@osiris.UUCP> <2126@haddock.ISC.COM> <1497@osiris.UUCP> <1971@ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM> <17309@topaz.rutgers.edu> <703@mplvax.nosc.MIL>
Sender: news@Stride.COM
Reply-To: mitch@stride1.Stride.COM (Thomas P. Mitchell)
Organization: MicroSage Comp. Sys. Inc., 680 S. Rock Blvd, Reno, NV 89502
Lines: 20
Summary: Demand page the CD

In article <703@mplvax.nosc.MIL> cdl@mplvax.nosc.mil.UUCP (Carl Lowenstein) writes:
>In article <17309@topaz.rutgers.edu> ron@topaz.rutgers.edu (Ron Natalie) writes:
>>CD ROM roots would be bad because CD ROM's are blindingly slow.
>
>Yes, but all you really want to do is reload the fast-disk root file system
>from the CD ROM once in a while, like when you re-boot everything.
>

One might consider placing the root FS in a demand paged area of
memory (AKA RAM DISK) which demand loads from the CD.  Then swap
pages out to a faster real disk for speedy recall.  With a large
enough virtual address space one could get rather clever even
with modest real memory.



Thomas P. Mitchell (mitch@stride1.Stride.COM)
Phone:	(702) 322-6868 TWX:	910-395-6073
MicroSage Computer Systems Inc. a Division of Stride Micro.
Opinions expressed are probably mine.