FreeBSD's embedded agenda

[Jim Thompson]

On May 25, 2006, at 10:28 AM, Ben Kelly wrote:

> On Thursday 25 May 2006 11:38 am, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
>> Writing a flash-friendly-filesystem would be a good project.
>
> Would it be reasonable to try porting JFFS2 or are their reasons to  
> write
> something from scratch?

some people have concerns about the performance of JFFS2 on large  
flash devices (> 16MB).  Frankly, if supporting large
flash devices (or arrays) is an issue, then perhaps the wear-leveling  
intermediate layer with a standard filesystem on top is a better  
approach.

The real issue with porting JFFS2 is that its covered by the GPL, and  
putting GPL code in the FreeBSD kernel is typically considered a 'no- 
no'.

Still, the embedded linux folks get a >TON< of milage out of MTD+JFFS2.

Nobody has brought up supporting non-Freesbie bootloaders, either.   
Many boards use redboot, u-boot or one of the MIPS loaders to get going.
Getting these to boot FreeBSD will also be part of any solution.   I  
don't think its practical to port Freesbie to any new board, not in  
the short-to-medium
timeframe, either.

Jim