boot time SW corruption check

[tinypoodle]

I just did some fairly quick tests (with TC 3.1rc2) as I found the whole question rather interesting.

Rather interesting indeed... Thanks for sharing results of your tests.

I also tried to see what happens when 'tinycore.gz' gets "damaged". I therefore choose to "flip" just one bit with the help of a hex editor in 'tinycore.gz' (offset: 0x300). I had mixed results when trying to un-compress this 'tinycore_faulty.gz':

• The BusyBox 'gzip' failed to un-compress the file when I tried gzip -d tinycore_faulty.gz (with gzip: crc error and gzip: error inflating)
  
• But it produced an output when I did gzip -cd tinycore_faulty.gz > tinycore_faulty.cpio (again spitting out the same warnings as before)
  

Makes me wonder what would happen with:

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gzip -df tinycore_faulty.gz or

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gunzip -f tinycore_faulty.gzin case you still have the bit flipped initrd.

• Likewise on XP I found most tools I tested refused to un-compress, when they spotted the CRC error. But some produced a file (albeit "under protest").

FWIW, I can remember that I had some corrupted rar archives under DOS which would only decompress with an added switch.

[gadget42]

Supposedly ZFS can detect and correct bit-level errors. Then again, I don't think anything can boot linux from ZFS. TC can read & write using the zfs-fuse extension, though.

concerning zfs and booting linux:
http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,25280.msg164654.html#msg164654