[Oberon] oberon-uefi ?

[D EMARD]

Hi!

Something like this seems as good idea for
best linux+oberon filesystem stability, to load
oberon executable from read-only media or initramfs
then mount vfat, and use emulator access oberon
disk image as a file in vfat. Although vfat itself "knows"
it was poweroffed unclean and has some fsck tool,
in practice seems not needed.

Maybe emulator can go more low-level to use raw linux
block device partiton (/dev/sda1 or similar) then oberon
will directly write its blocks all would be very lowlevel and
only drawback extra boot time (bios, linux, mount) I expect
30 seconds from power to cursor



On 11/6/22, Michael Schierl <schierlm at gmx.de> wrote:
> Hello,
>
>
> Am 06.11.2022 um 23:29 schrieb D EMARD:
>
>> True one could first boot linux and have every USB mouse
>> supported, then run oberon exe. One drawback is
>> linux shutdown is always recommeded before powering off
>> or there could be filesystem issues on next boot.
>
> Boot from an initramfs and have the Oberon user data on a separate
> filesystem. That way, your boot filesystem cannot get corrupted. And
> your user data drive can be checked and fixed from the initramfs.
>
>> oberon is more poweroff-resistant than linux so I'd find acceptable
>> buying supported mouse to run oberong on average uefi PC
>
> What filesystem are you using in Oberon? And what mount options are you
> using on Linux?
>
> I would assume an ext4 or vfat filesystem mounted with "-o flush" to be
> at least as resilient as any filesystem supported by Oberon. And ext4
> without "-o flush" may lose some recently written files if they did not
> make it from the cache to the journal, but still should not get
> inconsistent quickly. Using vfat without "-o flush" is a recipe for
> desaster if you do not unmount or sync the drive before poweroff. So
> just don't do that.
>
> And I would assume that Oberon's vfat driver will just flush all
> metadata on every file close, so basically does the same as "-o flush".
>
> Also, when using the UEFI boot services, you will probably use their
> VFAT driver instead of coming with your own. So you depend on the
> stability of your firmware's vfat driver. At least the UEFI vfat driver
> should also flush all metadata once you close the last file which you
> opened for writing, so probably stability is comparable to "-o flush" on
> Linux.
>
> (Yes, I sometimes have a bad habit of just running "sync" and then
> hard-resetting the machine when having booted some rescue Linux
> distribution, without shutting the distribution down cleanly. Never had
> any filesystem corruption due to that, even with NTFS and VFAT
> filesystems where Linux does not write a journal. On a full desktop
> distribution I would not do that, though, as there are too many
> background jobs that may interfere between the sync and the loss of
> power, or that may leave lockfiles behind.).
>
>
> Regards,
>
>
> Michael
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