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From: fachat@physik.tu-chemnitz.de (Andre Fachat)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Ideal filesystem
Followup-To: comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Date: 22 Mar 1996 10:29:02 GMT
Organization: University of Technology Chemnitz, FRG
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Message-ID: <4itvde$492@narses.hrz.tu-chemnitz.de>
References: <4hptj4$cf4@cville-srv.wam.umd.edu> <3140C968.20699696@netcom.com> <4isubc$ri9@floyd.sw.oz.au>
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I have once seen a concept that hides a directory, in that it makes
it look like a normal file. This was used for _binaries_, on a machine
with multiple - different! - CPUs, that had access to the same
filesystem and actually running _one_ OS.
The directory contained two files, one for each processor, i.e.
binary type. For std operations like 'ls' or so the dir looked like an
ordinary file.
Now lets go on thinking this way:
What about hiding extended file attributes in other files in this dir?
We should probably come up with a defined substructure of this
dir tree, like
filename(/bin/m68k
/i486
/...
/doc/english/man
/readme
/german/man
/liesmich
...)
For ls this would look normal. But cd into it would work as with any other
directory. Executing it would then find out which binary to run
and load it from the bin subdirectory.
The only thing we have to do is
- create a new file flag to indicate 'hidden directory executable'
- modify ls to ignore the directory attribute on such files, or show it
only with a certain switch.
- modify the executable loader (ld.so?) to look for the bin subdirectory.
Even tar should then automatically read the whole dir when trying to
pack the 'file'
Nothing of the 'file structure' needed to be hardcoded into the
kernel, only ld.so would have to do with it for executables.
Seems rather easy,....?
Andre
--
fachat@physik.tu-chemnitz.de | Andre Fachat, Phone: ++49-371-531-3551
-----------------------------| Vettersstr. 72/622, 09126 Chemnitz, Germany
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