*BSD News Article 11322


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From: peter@NeoSoft.com (Peter da Silva)
Subject: Re: [386BSD] truncating the beginning of a file
Organization: NeoSoft Communications Services -- (713) 684-5900
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1993 10:47:26 GMT
Message-ID: <C2HKn4.Bry@sugar.neosoft.com>
References: <1lm5qhINN8vb@life.ai.mit.edu>
Lines: 22

In article <1lm5qhINN8vb@life.ai.mit.edu> mycroft@hal.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Charles Hannum) writes:
> of the file's allocated space to the actual beginning of data.  (After
> Terry's patch, this should be initialized to 0 for all existing files.)
> Changes to `rdump' and `rrestore' may also be required.

Speaking of Terry's patch, has anyone written a program to go and zero those
extra feilds? I don't feel like testing such a program on my current system,
nor am I in a position to reinstall with his code in place.

As for putting the beginning of the file's data in there, I'd like to suggest
putting the *end* of the file's data in there for regular files, and the
beginning for directories (as is done in the Viva file system). That would
speed up searching "." and "..", and save a few extra fragment blocks,
without blowing the alignment of all files.

Another cute idea I thought of, is a system call to insert extra blocks
into the middle of a file.
-- 
Peter da Silva.  <peter@sugar.neosoft.com>.
 `-_-'   Oletko halannut suttasi tänään?
  'U`    
Tarjoilija, tämä ateria elää vielä.