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From: dillon@flea.best.net (Matt Dillon)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.sys.sgi.misc
Subject: Re: no such thing as a "general user community"
Date: 20 Mar 1997 19:32:26 -0800
Organization: BEST Internet Communications, Inc.
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Message-ID: <5gsvga$7e8@flea.best.net>
References: <331BB7DD.28EC@net5.net> <5grhf8$7d6$1@news.clinet.fi> <5gs1oc$kb2@flea.best.net> <3331e42e.58953417@nntp.best.com>
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Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:37419 comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc:6397 comp.sys.sgi.misc:29303
:In article <3331e42e.58953417@nntp.best.com>,
:Roger B.A. Klorese <rogerk@queernet.org> wrote:
:>On 20 Mar 1997 11:04:44 -0800, dillon@flea.best.net (Matt Dillon)
:>wrote:
:>> Well, Berkeley LFS is indeed a log file system :-) ... the only reason
:>> lfs is not in the mainstream yet is that it depends on a number of 4.4isms
:>> that were not yet ported.
:>
:>The reason LFS is not in the mainstream yet is that Margo's work
:>indicated that, once you add a flusher, LFS performs dog-slow compared
:>to geometric file systems like VxFS, UFS, and XFS. Logs are useful as
:>caches or in conjunction with special-purpose block I/O schemes
:>(NetApp's WAFL), but essentially a dead issue as a data file system
:>with any write load.
:>--
:>ROGER B.A. KLORESE rogerk@QueerNet.ORG
:>2215-R Market Street #576 San Francisco, CA 94114 +1 415 ALL-ARFF
:>"There is only one real blasphemy -- the refusal of joy!" -- Paul Rudnick
Well, this is probably true too... but I think the reason it wasn't
stable under 2.1/(2.2?) was more due to technical reasons.
When it comes right down to it, there are only two problems with FFS.
The first problem is the directory structure, and the second problem
is the I/O ordering requirement for meta-data updates. Both problems
are solveable.
For example, the directory lookup problem can be solved without loosing
backwards compatibility by simply organizing it in a sparse sorted
form and keeping it that way.
The meta-data updates are bit more difficult to deal with, but still
doable.
-Matt