Messages in this thread | | | Subject | Re: albods | Date | Sun, 11 Jul 1999 16:06:22 +0200 | From | Helge Hafting <> |
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> Hi, all. I see this discussion is still going on. Here's an > interesting idea for you (not mine, some other guy suggested it in > private email, but he doesn't seem to have taken up my suggestion of > posting it to linux-kernel). > > His idea is to used a modified loop driver, and build a filesystem in > a regular file, then mount this FS if you want to access different > data "streams". > > When creating the file, make it huge, but filled with holes. The > modified loop block driver would fill in holes as required (assuming > it doesn't do this already: I haven't looked).
Making the file huge will waste lots of space. How about this userspace solution:
Use the loop-mount way with a filesystem with very low overhead, similar to romfs. Start with a small file, and extend it when necessary. The filesystem must of course be designed in a way that allows extension by simply appending more space.
Extending the file can be handled by a standardized library that takes care of messy details like umount-extend-remount. This library might have its own implementation of "fwrite()" so it can be smart about extending the file.
A low-overhead filesystem could fragment a lot, but this can be helped by letting the albod-library have a idle-priority thread doing defragmentation when such files are in use.
We get: * A compact file useful for ftp, cp, and other transfers. * Many files in one for albod-aware apps (that use the appropriate library) * GUI Filemanagers may do the loop-mount thing when users click on this kind of file.
Helge Hafting
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