[ECOS] eCos file system question.

[ECOS] eCos file system question.

[felixwong]

Hello,

In the current CVS of eCos, is that the only file system support is ROMFS & RAMFS?

Will eCos provide file system support specific or all currently available Harddisk based
file systems like FAT16, FAT32, e2fs, NTFS etc.?

Also, in the "redboot" sub-directory of eCos install tree, there seems also a "fs"
sub-directory for IDE/e2fs and some disk operations.   Redboot supposed to be used
for debugging support of the target system.  What are these "fs" supposed to do in
the "redboot" section?  Any documents related to this?  Since the source was updated
in less than a month ago.  The author to this section (msalter), can you give out a little
hints on what this part does?

I am very interested in porting that part into the eCos file system of the target platform.

Anyone has any idea or interested in this part?  I'd like to have your opinon.

Thanks in advance.
Felix.

Re: [ECOS] eCos file system question.

[Jonathan Larmour]

felixwong@i-technologies.cc wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> In the current CVS of eCos, is that the only file system support is ROMFS & RAMFS?

At present, yes.

> Will eCos provide file system support specific or all currently available Harddisk based
> file systems like FAT16, FAT32, e2fs, NTFS etc.?

Eventually - we have all the infrastructure to do it, but no customers have
paid us to develop it and no contributors have contributed it.
 
> Also, in the "redboot" sub-directory of eCos install tree, there seems also a "fs"
> sub-directory for IDE/e2fs and some disk operations.   Redboot supposed to be used
> for debugging support of the target system.  What are these "fs" supposed to do in
> the "redboot" section?  Any documents related to this?  Since the source was updated
> in less than a month ago.  The author to this section (msalter), can you give out a little
> hints on what this part does?

This is readonly support for ext2 from RedBoot _only_. It would have to be
rewritten to support eCos. It is purely to find a file on an ext2
filesystem located on an IDE disk, and load it.
 
> I am very interested in porting that part into the eCos file system of the target platform.

It would have to be rewritten, sorry: there is no generic block layer, the
IDE interface is purely polled, the whole thing is readonly. It was written
this way because the requirements of RedBoot are so much less than eCos so
there was no desire to add that extra stuff in RedBoot even if it's only
used by eCos; and the customer didn't pay for it either.
 
Jifl
-- 
Red Hat, Rustat House, Clifton Road, Cambridge, UK. Tel: +44 (1223) 271062
Maybe this world is another planet's Hell -Aldous Huxley || Opinions==mine

Re: [ECOS] eCos file system question.

[Mark Salter]

> Also, in the "redboot" sub-directory of eCos install tree, there seems also a "fs"
> sub-directory for IDE/e2fs and some disk operations.   Redboot supposed to be used
> for debugging support of the target system.  What are these "fs" supposed to do in
> the "redboot" section?  Any documents related to this?  Since the source was updated
> in less than a month ago.  The author to this section (msalter), can you give out a little
> hints on what this part does?

In addition to debugging support, RedBoot is a bootloader. The fs support in RedBoot
allows RedBoot to load an image from disk. The first filesystem chosen was e2fs so
that we can load a Linux kernel from disk. Other filesystems are under consideration
but there are no definite plans at this point. RedBoot's needs for a filesystem are
much simpler (read-only, no buffering) than eCos' needs. That is why the initial
support was added to RedBoot specifically and not eCos generally. The RedBoot user
guide has some information on how to use this disk loading support.

--Mark