Re: initramfs buffer spec -- second draft

[Daniel Phillips <phillips@bonn-fries.net>]

First off, the documentation is great and the approach seems fundamentallly 
sound.

On January 12, 2002 09:04 am, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
[...]
> 	PAD(n)	means padding with null bytes to an n-byte boundary
> 	[QUESTION: is the padding relative to the start of the
> 	previous header, or is it an absolute address?  Is it at all
> 	legal to have a header start on a non-multiple of 4?]

I'll vote for the always/absolute rule.

[...]
> The structure of the cpio_header is as follows (all 8-byte entries
> contain 32-bit hexadecimal ASCII numbers):

I thought there's a binary version of the cpio header.  What is the
point of the ascii encoding?

[...]
> The c_mode field matches the contents of st_mode returned by stat(2)
> on Linux, and encodes the file type and file permissions.
> 
> The c_filesize should be zero for any non-regular file.
> 
> If the filename is "TRAILER!!!" this is actually an end-of-file
> marker; the c_filesize for an end-of-file marker must be zero.

It sure looks ugly, but I suppose the c_filesize=zero is the real
end-of-file marker.  Did I mention it sure looks ugly?

--
Daniel