The OS image as a filesystem

As previously mentioned, the OS image can be thought of as a filesystem. In fact, the image contains a small directory structure that tells procnto the names and positions of the files contained within it; the image also contains the files themselves. When the embedded system is running, the image can be accessed just like any other read-only filesystem:

# cd /proc/boot
# ls
.script     ping        cat       data1        pidin       
                                          
ksh         ls          ftp       procnto      devc-ser8250-abc123
# cat data1
This is a data file, called data1, contained in the image.
Note that this is a convenient way of associating data
files with your programs.

The above example actually demonstrates two aspects of having the OS image function as a filesystem. When we issued the ls command, the OS loaded ls from the image filesystem (pathname /proc/boot/ls). Then, when we issued the cat command, the OS loaded cat from the image filesystem as well, and opened the file data1.

Let's now take a look at how we configure the image to contain files.