Re: Contents of non-rootfs partitions

[Kristian Amlie <kristian.amlie@mender.io>]

On 22/11/16 12:10, Patrick Ohly wrote:
>> ...
> 
> All of these introduce some special mechanism. Let me propose something
> that might integrate better with the existing tooling:
> 
> The "rootfs" directory gets redefined as representing the entire virtual
> file system. When creating a disk image, it gets split up into different
> partitions based on the image configuration.
> 
> For example, the /home or /data directories in the rootfs could hold the
> content that in some image configurations goes into separate partitions.
> 
> The advantage of this approach is that the tooling for staging content
> for image creation does not need to be changed. The same staged content
> then can be used to create different images, potentially even using
> different partition layouts.

That's a very good idea. I think it beats all of my suggestions!

> To implement this approach with wic, wic needs to be taught how to
> exclude directories from the main rootfs. Ideally, the mkfs.* tools
> should also support that without having to make an intermediate copy of
> the files for a certain partition, but initially wic could create
> temporary directory trees.

Yes, some work would be needed here, but ultimately it would be contained within wic and related tools, which is a good thing.

-- 
Kristian