Comment on "Porting UNIX to the 386: The Initial Root Filesystem"

One of the series readers is a friend of many years, now in retirement. He reminded me of another clever way the initial root could have be formed.

This guy, who is very modest, is also *very original*. He pointed out that the original bootstrap code is in the kernel that executes /sbin/init.

Of course, its only a handful of instructions. But he correctly points out, it could be more. He suggests that if you embed the root's files in this program, it can extract into the root and then execute the bootup sequence.

So, to start with, you create a memory filesystem, extract into that, and execute. You then can create, load, and mount other filesystems from this root. This has definite advantages for a highly portable, high performance system - you have simply the kernel program to worry about, and you can prove out I/O and networking independent of system bring-up!

Perhaps this might also allow for a more intellegent way of configuring systems for a naive user base too!