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Xref: sserve comp.unix.bsd:16326 comp.unix.amiga:9722 Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!msunews!uwm.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!swrinde!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!delphi.cs.ucla.edu!johnh From: johnh@ficus.cs.ucla.edu (John Heidemann) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd,comp.unix.amiga Subject: Re: Compressed FS on NetBSD? Date: 7 Mar 1995 02:48:03 GMT Organization: UCLA Computer Science Dept. Lines: 37 Message-ID: <3jghh3$q6p@delphi.cs.ucla.edu> References: <3iiicj$cap@gatekeeper.cognos.com> <3j7eqs$1qi@cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: nottingham.cs.ucla.edu X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.0.b3.0 #11 (NOV) bnoble@cs.cmu.edu (Brian Noble) writes: >In article <3iiicj$cap@gatekeeper.cognos.com>, >Kevin Currie <curriek@Cognos.COM> wrote: >> I hear Linux has a compressed filesystem available for it (like >>Stacker, etc.). Is this available/being ported to NetBSD (NetBSD-Amiga >>hopefully! :-) >BSD 4.4-Lite-derived Un*ces have the ficus/locus stackable filesystem >functionality included, and the ficus/locus folks have implemented a >compression layer for easy inclusion into stacks: the compression >layer should be HW independent, since it depends on the lower level >ffs/ufs layer to do the bit twiddling for it. Getting this layer into >NetBSD should be (mostly) trivial. Thanks for the plug, Brian. I wanted to make two clarifications your post: First, the stackable file-system code in BSD 4.4 is from work done at UCLA as part of the Ficus project. Locus was not involved (other than that the ARPA PI heading the Ficus project also works at Locus). Second, the compression layer done at UCLA was a class project. Unfortunately we have not had the time to bring it up to production quality, so getting *this* layer into NetBSD is non-trivial. However, implementing a compression layer from scratch is not difficult if you're familiar with kernel programming. If someone has time to do the work and the knowledge to get started, I'm happy to pass on what I can (mostly pointers to relevant papers and advice from the prototype implementation). >See mount_nullfs(8) in the 4.4 manual set for more information. <URL:http://ficus-www.cs.ucla.edu/project-members/johnh/work.html> has pointers to some related papers. -John Heidemann