FreeBSD's embedded agenda

[Jim Thompson]

On May 29, 2006, at 6:02 PM, John Birrell wrote:

> On Mon, May 29, 2006 at 05:32:32PM -0400, Andrew Atrens wrote:
>> So then we agree - write a driver that makes raw flash look like a  
>> CF,
>> and does wear-levelling, gc, etc, under the hood. Then put whatever
>> f/s you want on it. it's a start at least. Then build your kick-ass
>> NAND-aware (or NOR aware or both) fs on top of that that makes use of
>> some extensions that the driver provides.  Okay, that's quite the
>> arm wave ... I must admit that I don't know so much about the  
>> existing
>> fs<->disk interface...
>
> Writing a NAND driver for FreeBSD using geom is a trivial matter. It
> only takes a few days or a week at the most.
>
> I don't really understand what all the fuss is here. I've built  
> FreeBSD
> embedded systems that are smaller than all the picobsd etc  
> configurations
> which all rely on choosing programs out of the standard FreeBSD  
> tree and
> putting them on a 'disk'.

Everything you wrote is true, if (and only if) your application can  
deal with having the non-vm-based filesystem(s) be RO.

But it was true for linux prior to JFFS/JFFS2 as well.