Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: /dev/zero (was Re: mounting minixfs from linux)
References: <91l2je$af0qi$1@hades.rz.uni-sb.de> <91ni41$29eu$1@nef.ens.fr> <93junn$cp6m1$1@hades.rz.uni-sb.de> <93k37i$1vv7$1@nef.ens.fr>
Organization: Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY
From: aje9383@osfmail.isc.rit.edu (Andrew Erickson)
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In article <93k37i$1vv7$1@nef.ens.fr>,
Thomas Pornin <pornin@bolet.ens.fr> wrote:

<snip of stuff>

>Looks like a buggy mkfs.minix tool under Linux.
>(Prior to making the original filesystem under Minix, fill the floppy
>with zeroes: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/fd0  [under Linux]. It will make
>minixfs.gz much smaller).

Speaking of which, is there any good reason why Minix doesn't have a
/dev/zero?  (e.g. is writing one an exercise in OS:D&I?)  If not, I'll see
about writing one; it seems it would only take about a dozen lines of code,
at most, in ..../kernel/memory.c, most of which is replicated boilerplate
from /dev/null.

-- 
Andrew Erickson
