[OpenIndiana-discuss] Will OpenIndiana switch to SquashFS?

[Till Wegmueller]

Hi

You don't need a writable root filesystem. Especially on a live 
environment. SmartOS for exmple is a "Live" environment in that sense 
but it's rootfs is completelty read-only so nobodies changes get lost. 
IMHO aufs on top of a live system is more of a easy way to brick your 
system rather than a help. You want to update the live system with apt 
and then boot a new one? You are going to be in a whole lot of trouble then.

And for your USB question, yes with the right tools you can also make 
anther partition and store data on it. And you can edit the script that 
makes the USB file to already contain an empty partition.

But I don't bother since I reflash the thing mostly anyway. And on next 
DD the data get's lots anyway, as we also add a MBR to that image not 
just the partition.

-Till

On 09.01.21 07:52, Hung Nguyen Gia via openindiana-discuss wrote:
> Thanks for your clarification. But you didn't answer the second part of my question. Hope someone will address it.
> 
> I do have another question. Everyone of us knows that a read-only root file system is not enough for a live system. There always a need for some overlayfs/unionfs/aufs to have a writable root file system. So what is the technology used on OI? Thanks.
> 
> 
> ---- On Sat, 09 Jan 2021 16:41:18 +0700 Peter Tribble <peter.tribble at gmail.com> wrote ----
> 
>   > On Sat, Jan 9, 2021 at 6:37 AM Hung Nguyen Gia via openindiana-discuss <
>   > openindiana-discuss at openindiana.org> wrote:
>   >
>   > > Most Linux distributions now employing SquashFS for their live system so
>   > > they are blazing fast even though being run from a slow USB 2.0 stick. I'm
>   > > posting this mail on one of such live system. I found OpenIndiana is using
>   > > another technology:
>   > > https://ptribble.blogspot.com/2012/10/those-strange-zlib-files.html
>   > >
>   > > Does this technology comparable to SquashFS? And if SquashFS is better, is
>   > > there any plan to switch to SquashFS?
>   > >
>   >
>   > The illumos distributions have alway used a compressed filesystem for the
>   > live image.
>   > There's no difference to squashfs in that respect - we're just normally
>   > compressing the
>   > whole image. There's no benefit to changing to a different scheme that's
>   > essentially
>   > identical.
>   >
>   > We do actually have a direct equivalent to squashfs already - dcfs. I've
>   > not seen it used
>   > much, although it was used on SPARC to compress the files in the boot
>   > archive. (On x86,
>   > the bootloader can read a compressed boot archive, so you don't need it
>   > there.)
>   >
>   > --
>   > -Peter Tribble
>   > http://www.petertribble.co.uk/ - http://ptribble.blogspot.com/
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>   >
> 
> 
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