Patent ID: 7614051

Claim:
In a computing environment, a method of creating a file system within a file in a storage technology abstracted manner so that that file system can be easily applied to varying storage technologies, the method comprising: accessing packages containing image data to install to a first storage medium, wherein at least some of the packages are operating system image components, and wherein the packages include an update loader component, a kernel component, an operating system files component, and a user data component; accessing a description of partitions to which the package contents are to be written, the description of the partitions comprising information correlating each package to a particular partition, wherein the description of partitions comprises an Extensible Markup Language (XML) file; and based on the accessed packages and the description of the partitions, generating an output file to a second storage medium, the output file being an image file and containing a plurality of partitions wherein each partition corresponds to a file system, but not implementing file system logic for a particular storage technology, with the contents of each package stored in one of the plurality of partitions based on the description of the partitions, and wherein the output file comprises: a first partition, wherein the first partition comprises binary code implementing an update loader; a second partition, the second partition being a kernel partition, and storing at least one of a random access memory (RAM) image or a read only memory (ROM) image; a third partition, the third partition being a system partition and comprising operating system files; a fourth partition, the fourth partition being a user partition specified for user data storage.