Mounting tar files

[Ignazio Di Napoli]

Hi all.
I want to copy my Cygwin installation on my SD card. Since it's formed
by many small files, and my flash memory performance is very poor with
such files, I was wondering if there is some way to mount a tar file, or
something like, even if in read-only way, searching in the archive if
the file is not found in the "normal" directory and writing everything
in the latter.

Thank you,
Ignazio

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[joekrahn]

Ignazio Di Napoli wrote:

Hi all.
I want to copy my Cygwin installation on my SD card. Since it's formed
by many small files, and my flash memory performance is very poor with
such files, I was wondering if there is some way to mount a tar file, or
something like, even if in read-only way, searching in the archive if
the file is not found in the "normal" directory and writing everything
in the latter.

Thank you,
Ignazio

An ISO-9660 image is sort of like a tar file, but with some extra overhead. It sounds like you are trying to do something like Knoppix. They use a compressed read-only filesystem for the base image, combined with a special read/write filesystem (based on symlinks, I think) that holds actual file data only for changed files.

Doing this in Windows would not be easy. There are some programs around that mount ISO images as a virtual filesystem. But, if you have to install extra support software, what is the point of installing Cygwin on an SD card? If you want a portable Cygwin, why not put most of it onto a CD?

[Ignazio Di Napoli]

joekrahn wrote:
> An ISO-9660 image is sort of like a tar file, but with some extra overhead.
> It sounds like you are trying to do something like Knoppix. They use a
> compressed read-only filesystem for the base image, combined with a special
> read/write filesystem (based on symlinks, I think) that holds actual file
> data only for changed files.

It's what I would like.

> Doing this in Windows would not be easy. There are some programs around that
> mount ISO images as a virtual filesystem. But, if you have to install extra
> support software, what is the point of installing Cygwin on an SD card? If
> you want a portable Cygwin, why not put most of it onto a CD?

Because a SD card is smaller and read/write. Mounting a CD ISO copied on
the SD would also be possible, but as you said it would require the
installation of software. I though it could be possible to manage the
whole thing in a simpler way (maybe with a port of some software that
many live distribution like Knoppix use).

Thank you
Ignazio

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