You don't have to have disk to use filesystem. Lot of people using CompactFlash to hold filesystem. There is also the NFS option. -earlm > -----Original Message----- > From: Justin Carlson [mailto:justinca@cs.cmu.edu] > Sent: Tuesday, February 18, 2003 2:22 PM > To: turcotte@broadcom.com > Cc: linux-mips@linux-mips.org > Subject: Re: Exec from Memory > > On Tue, 2003-02-18 at 17:08, Maurice Turcotte wrote: > > Greetings: > > > > I have a hypothetical linux-mips question posed by a colleage. > > > > Suppose there is no file system available, since there is no disk. And > > suppose that I had the capability to place an elf file in a known > location > > in memory. How would I execute it? It seems like exec really wants a > file > > name. BTW, this needs to run in use space, not kernel. > > > > There's no easy way (that know of) around the filesystem abstraction. > You're going to have to deal with it in some manner. Really basic > stuff, like the elf loader, depends on vfs abstractions. While it's > possible to bypass all that, it would be a *lot* of work, and a lot of > nearly-duplicated code. > > I can see a couple of options. Other people might have better > suggestions. :) > > 1) Use the embedded root ramdisk functionality in the kernel. Make your > elf file /sbin/init, and run with it. > > 2) Hack a quick filesystem that uses a contiguous chunk of memory that > you either hardcode or pass in on the kernel command line. > > -Justin >
