i know, it sounds like a moderately inane question, but it came up
in the context of a legacy, DOS-formatted system where the quest was
to install linux, *but* retain the option of backtracking to DOS in
case things didn't go well, and the proposal was to retain the DOS
formatting of the filesystem.
i suggested that there was little chance of that succeeding, but
after the chat, i sat down and tried to enumerate all of the reasons
it wouldn't succeed. based on the current Filesystem Hierarchy
Standard (FHS 3.0), it seems that all of the following necessities for
a linux root filesystem would be unavailable with a DOS (or FAT or
VFAT) filesystem:
* no proper execute bits on executables
* no essential suid or sgid bits on executables
* no essential sticky bits on directories like /tmp
* no support for device files in /dev (which, according to the FHS,
*must* be part of the root filesystem)
* no symbolic links, which most versions of linux require for backward
compatibility
i'm pretty sure the lack of *any* of the above is pretty much
fatal, but are there any other arguments that would add even more
nails to that coffin?
rday