Carl-Daniel,
thanks for bringing this up.
* Carl-Daniel Hailfinger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [080107 10:40]:
> The bootblock will always be the last member of the lar. We also try to
> fill the lar from the bottom up. That means unless the lar is completely
> full, we will walk an empty are in 16 byte increments. Since we know the
> location of the boot block (top of flash) and we also know we never have
> to lookup or load the bootblock during LB execution, there should be an
> easy way to specify "from here to the beginning of the bootblock there
> will be no file" which is equivalent to "stop searching here".
> The "no file till bootblock" functionality can be implemented in three ways:
> 1. Explicit "stop searching here" marker or lar member.
> 2. Explicit lar member covering the free space.
> 3. List free space somehere in flash.
>
> Two of these ways fail in practice:
> 3. Listing free space in flash means erasing and/or rewriting that list
> everytime the lar changes. The only reasonable place for such a list
> would be the bootblock and we don't want to touch it during partial reflash.
> 2. Explicit free space covering lar member is fine, but to add any new
> file to the archive, you have to erase the part covered by the exlusive
> space.
I don't think this is such a bit problem. Lar could remove this entry
automatically, and recreate it. This is not more special code in lar
than 1. But I start thinking that those two are pretty much the same in
the end.
What about a linked list in the header? Each file could explicitly point
to the next file. If the pointer is 0 or -1, we stop.
This way we would not lock out the "bootblock" file in our lar search.
--
coresystems GmbH • Brahmsstr. 16 • D-79104 Freiburg i. Br.
Tel.: +49 761 7668825 • Fax: +49 761 7664613
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] • http://www.coresystems.de/
Registergericht: Amtsgericht Freiburg • HRB 7656
Geschäftsführer: Stefan Reinauer • Ust-IdNr.: DE245674866
--
linuxbios mailing list
linuxbios@linuxbios.org
http://www.linuxbios.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios
