I use it a lot because the Linux kernel can mount it as rootfs during boot with little more than a few boot commend line flags. This IMO comes in very handy when working on embedded systems (at least when they have Ethernet and a sane boot loader).
My development setup looks pretty much like this: My workstation is connected to the board and has DHCP, DNS, TFTP & NFS servers running on that port. Outbound traffic from the board is routed across the workstation and possibly passed through tcpdump or Wireshark.
The boot loader on the board would get an IP from my box, then load the kernel & device tree from the TFTP server. The kernel would then do the DHCP dance again and mount the NFS rootfs from my box.
I can simply recompile the kernel, power cycle the board and have it boot into the new one with all the new/changed modules available in the rootfs; or recompile some user space software I'm working on, install it into the rootfs and have it available on the board immediately.
The only other options I can think of would be 9pfs and SMB. Support for SMB as rootfs was only quite recently and 9pfs would require some initrd trickery.
I use it a lot because the Linux kernel can mount it as rootfs during boot with little more than a few boot commend line flags. This IMO comes in very handy when working on embedded systems (at least when they have Ethernet and a sane boot loader).
My development setup looks pretty much like this: My workstation is connected to the board and has DHCP, DNS, TFTP & NFS servers running on that port. Outbound traffic from the board is routed across the workstation and possibly passed through tcpdump or Wireshark.
The boot loader on the board would get an IP from my box, then load the kernel & device tree from the TFTP server. The kernel would then do the DHCP dance again and mount the NFS rootfs from my box.
I can simply recompile the kernel, power cycle the board and have it boot into the new one with all the new/changed modules available in the rootfs; or recompile some user space software I'm working on, install it into the rootfs and have it available on the board immediately.
The only other options I can think of would be 9pfs and SMB. Support for SMB as rootfs was only quite recently and 9pfs would require some initrd trickery.