Dynamic size file-backed filesystem

Greetings,

Yep. It's totally possible. Think of mounting an .ISO file on your system. But there are many more possibilities. You'll want to visit the FreeBSD documentation. The Handbook should be your first stop. Especially the parts on installing, and as I recall, I first noticed it, in a paragraph about increasing SWAP space, when you run out, using file based swap.

HTH

--chris
 
Dynamically sized, though? Not with a file. People periodically try to create a sparse swap file with bad results. tmpfs(5) is dynamic, but not file-backed.

What is the application?
 
wblock@ said:
Dynamically sized, though? Not with a file.
Click to expand...
This does make me wonder, though. On several occasions I have mounted USB install images, added files to them (typically pre-made configuration files), unmounted the images and written the result to a flash drive without any ill effects. But I've also heard reports from others that such a procedure failed for them. Have I just been lucky all the time?
 
fonz said:
This does make me wonder, though. On several occasions I have mounted USB install images, added files to them (typically pre-made configuration files), unmounted the images and written the result to a flash drive without any ill effects. But I've also heard reports from others that such a procedure failed for them. Have I just been lucky all the time?
Click to expand...

I've done exactly the same -- in fact, just recently, with 9.x. It worked perfectly. But past experiences were quite troublesome. I'm guessing either hardware used, or just better support in FreeBSD (drivers are now more robust).

--chris
 
fonz said:
This does make me wonder, though. On several occasions I have mounted USB install images, added files to them (typically pre-made configuration files), unmounted the images and written the result to a flash drive without any ill effects.
Click to expand...

Sure, that works fine. The contents change, but the image file does not change size.
 
wblock@ said:
Sure, that works fine. The contents change, but the image file does not change size.
Click to expand...
Does that mean the USB install image has (some) room to spare? I'm adding files, after all.
 
A little room, yes. For 9.1-RELEASE amd64:
Code: 
Filesystem            Size    Used   Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/md0a             731M    683M
 
wblock@ said:
What is the application?
Click to expand...

Have an encrypted file-backed filesystem which I can put onto a flash drive along with other unprotected files. I know how to do that, but if the filesytem has a fixed size.

Thanks.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top