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From: peter@nmti.com (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.linux.networking,comp.os.linux.setup,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.unix.bsd.misc
Subject: User-space file systems.
(Re: Linux vs BSD)
Date: 16 Feb 1997 00:48:10 GMT
Organization: Network/development platform support, NMTI
Lines: 37
Message-ID: <5e5lga$lg6@web.nmti.com>
References: <32DFFEAB.7704@usa.net> <Pine.SOL.3.91.970201040446.16129A-100000@ux8.cso.uiuc.edu> <5l20akqffh.fsf@tequila.systemsz.cs.yale.edu> <87sp2z8562.fsf@elanor.acs.ohio-state.edu>
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In article <87sp2z8562.fsf@elanor.acs.ohio-state.edu>,
Greg Dearing <dearing.2@osu.edu> wrote:
> But as long as this thread has went, all of the FreeBSD people have
> avoided the basic question that's been asked over and over. What the
> heck would I do with a FreeBSD emulator? :)
I don't know. I don't think anyone's really interested in that.
By the way, this discussion *has* convinced me that my original assumption
that implementing a network file system in user mode would not be horribly
inefficient is correct.
What had convinced me I was wrong was the lousy performance of the Linux NFS,
which I assumed was due to it being a user-mode implementation.
If it does in fact limit buffer sizes to 1k, then that is *easily* enought
of a handicap to explain its poor behaviour.
I've used a network file system implemented in usermode in the past (OpenNET
from Microsoft and/or Intel, an SMB-based Xenix-UNIX network with DOS and
VMS support), and I've been using Samba more recently (another SMB-based
network, but one not compatible with OpenNET... Microsoft strikes again).
They don't seem horrible (though I've not benchmarked them... I'd expect
OpenNET to come out very poorly just because it's running on Xenix-286,
though).
I really do like the idea of implementing components in user-space, what else
do people have on hand?
(it'd also be really nice if there were a cleaner interface to user-space
file-systems on the client side... Alex and Rumba pretend to be a NFS servers,
for example)
--
The Reverend Peter da Silva, ULC, COQO, BOFH.
Har du kramat din varg, idag? `-_-'