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Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2001 13:08:17 +0000
From: Padraig Brady <Padraig@AnteFacto.com>
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To: mas9483@ksu.edu
CC: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: gzipped executables
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You might consider UPX (http://upx.tsx.org)
Very cool. The beta version supports compressing the kernel
and "direct-to-memory" compression. I think it still
has the disadvantage of not sharing segments between many
instances of the same program. Is there any way of fixing
this? (probably would have to hack a bit with the loader?)

For a general solution I would look @ changing the filesystem
so that particular files (not just executables) can be compressed/
decompressed transparently. (I.E. for ext2 implement `chattr +c`).

Padraig.

Ingo Oeser wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 13, 2001 at 08:40:31AM -0000, ketil@froyn.com wrote:
> 
>> On Mon, 12 Feb 2001 23:09:39 -0600 (CST) Matt Stegman <mas9483@ksu.edu> wrote:
>> 
>>> Is there any kernel patch that would allow Linux to properly recognize,
>>> and execute gzipped executables?
>> 
>> Perhaps you could put it in the filesystem. Look at the
>> "chattr" manpage, which shows how this is meant to work with
>> ext2. It seems not to have been implemented yet. This way you
>> could also compress any files, not just executables.
> 
> 
> A nice way already implemented in 2.4.x is cramfs. Many embedded
> people (like me) use it to fill up their flash disks.
> 
> Look at linux/Documentation/filesystems/cramfs.txt for more info.
> 
> Regards
> 
> Ingo Oeser

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