Fibration questions

Fibration questions

[David Dabbs]

I'm curious why the fibration function prototypes take an inode* (that is
unused)? I looked at struct_inode and I can't see anything that looks
helpful to calculating a fibre.

/* fibration.c: sample fibration_plugin.fibre() function proto */ 
static __u64 fibre_dot_o(const struct inode *dir, const char *name, int
len);



Since fibre_dot_o is the default fibration plugin, could it be safely
shortened from:

	if (len > 2 && name[len - 1] == 'o' && name[len - 2] == '.')
		return FIBRE_NO(1);
	else
		return FIBRE_NO(0);

to

return FIBRE_NO((len > 2 && name[len - 1] == 'o' && name[len - 2] == '.'));

since the boolean expression will always return 1 or 0?



In Nikita's explanation of fibration [http://kerneltrap.org/node/view/2761]
(keeping .o files separate form all other files to speed compilation), would
there be any advantage to the following function?

	unsigned char no=1;
	if (len > 2 && name[len - 2] == '.') {
		switch (name[len - 1]) {
		case: 'c'
		case: 'h'
			no=0
			break;

		case: 'o'
			no = 2;
			break;

		}
	}
	return FIBRE_NO(no);



Using the fibre for fast extension testing
A common filesystem client query is for '*.xxx'. If there were (is?) an
alternate readdir[64]() interface that allowed the caller to pass an
'extension mask/filter,' then the fibre could be leveraged to quickly test
whether a given file matches the mask without calling unpack_string(), etc.
Kind of like saying to the filesystem: 

	SELECT filename WHERE dir = '/home' AND filename LIKE '%.xxx'

A 'fibration map' would need to be specified in an array, say

	const char * fibre_map[] = {"c", "h", "o"...};

or using a structure like

	struct fibre_map_ent {
		unsigned char fibrno;
		unsigned char *exten;
	};

	#define FIBR_MAX 127
	#define FIBR_DEFAULT FIBR_MAX-1
	/* should be ordered by exten for searching */
	const struct fibre_map_ent map[] = 
	{
		{.fibrno=6, 	exten="bar"},
		{.fibrno=0, 	exten="c"},
		{.fibrno=1, 	exten="h"},
		{.fibrno=3, 	exten="htm"},
		{.fibrno=3, 	exten="html"},
		{.fibrno=2, 	exten="java"},
		{.fibrno=FIBR_MAX, exten="o"},
		{.fibrno=4, 	exten="pl"},
		{.fibrno=5, 	exten="py"}
		{.fibrno=7, 	exten="xml"}
	};

	/* 
		failure to find a match returns 

			FIBRE_NO(FIBR_DEFAULT);
		else

			FIBRE_NO(map[i].fibro);


The enhanced readdir would lookup the mask. If found, it would use the
fibrno to select appropriate directory entries for the readdir stream.
Otherwise, it would execute the default readdir code. Of course, this map
would need to be the global default for the filesystem and per-directory
fibration override would be prohibited, otherwise readdir would return
incorrect results.

Re: Fibration questions

[Nikita Danilov]

David Dabbs writes:
 > 
 > 
 > I'm curious why the fibration function prototypes take an inode* (that is
 > unused)? I looked at struct_inode and I can't see anything that looks
 > helpful to calculating a fibre.

This for more advanced fibration plugins that keep some per-directory
state (none at the moment).

 > 
 > /* fibration.c: sample fibration_plugin.fibre() function proto */ 
 > static __u64 fibre_dot_o(const struct inode *dir, const char *name, int
 > len);
 > 
 > 
 > 
 > Since fibre_dot_o is the default fibration plugin, could it be safely
 > shortened from:
 > 
 > 	if (len > 2 && name[len - 1] == 'o' && name[len - 2] == '.')
 > 		return FIBRE_NO(1);
 > 	else
 > 		return FIBRE_NO(0);
 > 
 > to
 > 
 > return FIBRE_NO((len > 2 && name[len - 1] == 'o' && name[len - 2] == '.'));
 > 
 > since the boolean expression will always return 1 or 0?
 > 

Well, what would this achieve (besides code obfuscation)? I highly
doubt that one can present a work-load where fibration calls will be
CPU bottlenecks. Premature optimization is a root of all evil, as they
say.

 > 
 > 
 > In Nikita's explanation of fibration [http://kerneltrap.org/node/view/2761]
 > (keeping .o files separate form all other files to speed compilation), would
 > there be any advantage to the following function?
 > 
 > 	unsigned char no=1;
 > 	if (len > 2 && name[len - 2] == '.') {
 > 		switch (name[len - 1]) {
 > 		case: 'c'
 > 		case: 'h'
 > 			no=0
 > 			break;
 > 
 > 		case: 'o'
 > 			no = 2;
 > 			break;
 > 
 > 		}
 > 	}
 > 	return FIBRE_NO(no);

The whole point of having plugin infrastructure is that one is able to
play with new file system policies easily. Just try it!

 > 
 > 
 > 
 > Using the fibre for fast extension testing
 > A common filesystem client query is for '*.xxx'. If there were (is?) an
 > alternate readdir[64]() interface that allowed the caller to pass an
 > 'extension mask/filter,' then the fibre could be leveraged to quickly test
 > whether a given file matches the mask without calling unpack_string(), etc.
 > Kind of like saying to the filesystem: 
 > 
 > 	SELECT filename WHERE dir = '/home' AND filename LIKE '%.xxx'

There is no such system call (there are user-level functions with the
similar functionality, fts(3), and scandir(3)).

sys_reiser4() system call is targeted to similar data-base like kind
of access paths.

 > 
 > A 'fibration map' would need to be specified in an array, say
 > 
 > 	const char * fibre_map[] = {"c", "h", "o"...};
 > 
 > or using a structure like
 > 
 > 	struct fibre_map_ent {
 > 		unsigned char fibrno;
 > 		unsigned char *exten;
 > 	};
 > 
 > 	#define FIBR_MAX 127
 > 	#define FIBR_DEFAULT FIBR_MAX-1
 > 	/* should be ordered by exten for searching */
 > 	const struct fibre_map_ent map[] = 
 > 	{
 > 		{.fibrno=6, 	exten="bar"},
 > 		{.fibrno=0, 	exten="c"},
 > 		{.fibrno=1, 	exten="h"},
 > 		{.fibrno=3, 	exten="htm"},
 > 		{.fibrno=3, 	exten="html"},
 > 		{.fibrno=2, 	exten="java"},
 > 		{.fibrno=FIBR_MAX, exten="o"},
 > 		{.fibrno=4, 	exten="pl"},
 > 		{.fibrno=5, 	exten="py"}
 > 		{.fibrno=7, 	exten="xml"}
 > 	};
 > 
 > 	/* 
 > 		failure to find a match returns 
 > 
 > 			FIBRE_NO(FIBR_DEFAULT);
 > 		else
 > 
 > 			FIBRE_NO(map[i].fibro);
 > 
 > 
 > The enhanced readdir would lookup the mask. If found, it would use the
 > fibrno to select appropriate directory entries for the readdir stream.
 > Otherwise, it would execute the default readdir code. Of course, this map
 > would need to be the global default for the filesystem and per-directory
 > fibration override would be prohibited

RE: Fibration questions

[David Dabbs]

> Nikita Danilov wrote:
> 
> Well, what would this achieve (besides code obfuscation)? I highly
> doubt that one can present a work-load where fibration calls will be
> CPU bottlenecks. Premature optimization is a root of all evil, as they
> say.
>

Yeah, you're right Prof Knuth. :) I thought better of that after I sent it. 

 
> 
> The whole point of having plugin infrastructure is that one is able to
> play with new file system policies easily. Just try it!
> 

I'll do that. Recalling your kerneltrap post, I figured that if it was
desirable to separate the .o files from the sources that it would be good to
keep c & h together. However, if you or another r4 developer said, 'we
profiled this and it is of marginal benefit,' then why bother?


>  > Using the fibre for fast extension testing
>  > A common filesystem client query is for '*.xxx'. If there were (is?) an
>  > alternate readdir[64]() interface that allowed the caller to pass an
>  > 'extension mask/filter,' then the fibre could be leveraged to quickly
> test
>  > whether a given file matches the mask without calling unpack_string(),
> etc.
>  > Kind of like saying to the filesystem:
>  >
>  > 	SELECT filename WHERE dir = '/home' AND filename LIKE '%.xxx'
> 
> There is no such system call (there are user-level functions with the
> similar functionality, fts(3), and scandir(3)).
> 
> sys_reiser4() system call is targeted to similar data-base like kind
> of access paths.
> 

I saw something about the syscall syntax somewhere, perhaps in the parser
code. Should go back and investigate further. Any pointers to the most
up-to-date docs would be appreciated.


Thanks Nikita.

David

Re: Fibration questions

[Hans Reiser]

David Dabbs wrote:

>
>
>Using the fibre for fast extension testing
>A common filesystem client query is for '*.xxx'. If there were (is?) an
>alternate readdir[64]() interface that allowed the caller to pass an
>'extension mask/filter,' then the fibre could be leveraged to quickly test
>whether a given file matches the mask without calling unpack_string(), etc.
>Kind of like saying to the filesystem: 
>
>	SELECT filename WHERE dir = '/home' AND filename LIKE '%.xxx'
>
>A 'fibration map' would need to be specified in an array, say
>
>	const char * fibre_map[] = {"c", "h", "o"...};
>
>or using a structure like
>
>	struct fibre_map_ent {
>		unsigned char fibrno;
>		unsigned char *exten;
>	};
>
>	#define FIBR_MAX 127
>	#define FIBR_DEFAULT FIBR_MAX-1
>	/* should be ordered by exten for searching */
>	const struct fibre_map_ent map[] = 
>	{
>		{.fibrno=6, 	exten="bar"},
>		{.fibrno=0, 	exten="c"},
>		{.fibrno=1, 	exten="h"},
>		{.fibrno=3, 	exten="htm"},
>		{.fibrno=3, 	exten="html"},
>		{.fibrno=2, 	exten="java"},
>		{.fibrno=FIBR_MAX, exten="o"},
>		{.fibrno=4, 	exten="pl"},
>		{.fibrno=5, 	exten="py"}
>		{.fibrno=7, 	exten="xml"}
>	};
>
>	/* 
>		failure to find a match returns 
>
>			FIBRE_NO(FIBR_DEFAULT);
>		else
>
>			FIBRE_NO(map[i].fibro);
>
>
>The enhanced readdir would lookup the mask. If found, it would use the
>fibrno to select appropriate directory entries for the readdir stream.
>Otherwise, it would execute the default readdir code. Of course, this map
>would need to be the global default for the filesystem and per-directory
>fibration override would be prohibited, otherwise readdir would return
>incorrect results.
>
>
>
>  
>
I think this is too implementation dependent of an optimization to be 
allowed to influence API design. 

There is a need for support for * in filename queries.  I would support 
adding that to sys_reiser4.

If FS naming was better designed, filenames would not have extensions.  
I prefer to first better design naming, and then not need to optimize 
the API for extensions.

RE: Fibration questions

[David Dabbs]

I see I'm not the only one up late. 


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Hans Reiser [mailto:reiser@namesys.com]
> Sent: Sunday, July 18, 2004 2:12 AM
> To: David Dabbs
> Cc: reiserfs-list@namesys.com
> >
> I think this is too implementation dependent of an optimization to be
> allowed to influence API design.
>

Understood.
 
> There is a need for support for * in filename queries.  I would support
> adding that to sys_reiser4.
> 

When the time comes for investigating such support, would it mean a change
to the 'sys_reiser4 syntax' (therefore the parser)? Other than a brief gloss
of a web page that deals with it I haven't investigated the syscall
syntax/capabilities, so pardon if this is misplaced.

> If FS naming was better designed, filenames would not have extensions.
> I prefer to first better design naming, and then not need to optimize
> the API for extensions.

While the subject of priorities is on the table, is there a 'reiser4
janitors' list' similar to the kernel janitors' list? Reading through the
code I've seen a number of XXX-FIXME-HANS, etc. Would these TODOs, assuming
the comments remain relevant, be (one of) the places for those wising to
contribute to investigate?

David

Re: Fibration questions

[David Masover]

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Hans Reiser wrote:
[...]
| If FS naming was better designed, filenames would not have extensions.
| I prefer to first better design naming, and then not need to optimize
| the API for extensions.

Still, if we're going to fibrate by file type and want to find a file by
file type, there needs to be -- surprise! -- a standard way to determine
file type.

Extensions are universal, and aren't going away soon.  What do we want
to replace them with?  Only thing I particularly care about here is that
a file can appear as more than one type -- a script is both a program
and a text file, for example.  Of course, you'd only be able to fibrate
by one type (right?), so there'd have to be a "primary" file type.

This is helpful because it's the right thing to do, but also because it
may have implications right now.  For example, Gedit and AbiWord should
both show me uncompressed AbiWord docs in their "open" dialogs, by
default.  Using file extensions, that isn't possible unless you hack
Gedit to "know" every possible text file extension, or check the magic
on each file in the directory.

The "propor" way to implement it would be to ask the filesystem
something like "List all the text files in this directory".  And not,
btw, "List all the *.txt files in this directory".


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RE: Fibration questions

[David Dabbs]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Masover [mailto:ninja@slaphack.com]
> Sent: Sunday, July 18, 2004 11:24 PM
> To: Hans Reiser
> Cc: David Dabbs; reiserfs-list@namesys.com
> 
> Hans Reiser wrote:
> [...]
> | If FS naming was better designed, filenames would not have extensions.
> | I prefer to first better design naming, and then not need to optimize
> | the API for extensions.
> 
> Still, if we're going to fibrate by file type and want to find a file by
> file type, there needs to be -- surprise! -- a standard way to determine
> file type.
> 

There be dragons. Despite the fact that I advocated applying fibration data
to filesystem queries, the two (fibrating by file type [extension] and
'finding a file by file type') are quite different. The former is simply a
way to bunch/glom/group particular filesystem objects together in the tree.
The latter requires metadata beyond that provided by the filesystem objects
themselves.

Leaving aside fibration for a moment, there is a (big) difference between
the filesystem's ability to answer an (objective) query regarding some
aspect of an object's human-readable name (search by extension) and what it
seems you are seeking (search by file _type_). In your use case, the
filesystem would be required to 'deduce,' via suitable, consistent and
human-maintained metadata, which objects are subclasses of some 'type' 
in a human-maintained 'FileObject' ontology.

This is the kind of thing for which the W3C's SemanticWeb activity might
advocate OWL/RDF. Possible means aside, the following are among the
questions the community would need to address:
 
1. What is the range of 'file types'?
2. The range of known 'file type aliases' (extensions)?
3. How should applications interpret and buy into this consensus?
4. At what level is this ontology managed? The OS, VFS, particular
filesystems?
5. What is a portable metadata storage format that is easily maintained (and
shared) by humans and parsed/employed by applications?

> Extensions are universal, and aren't going away soon.  What do we want

Extensions are a convention humans share that are tenuously/inconsistently
'understood' by the computers humans use. Under Windows, an installed
application also installs a 'rule' that associates the application with
filesystem objects that exhibit certain attributes, e.g. that they end in
'.foo.' 

> to replace them with?  Only thing I particularly care about here is that
> a file can appear as more than one type -- a script is both a program
> and a text file, for example.  Of course, you'd only be able to fibrate
> by one type (right?), so there'd have to be a "primary" file type.
> 
> This is helpful because it's the right thing to do, but also because it
> may have implications right now.  For example, Gedit and AbiWord should
> both show me uncompressed AbiWord docs in their "open" dialogs, by
> default.  Using file extensions, that isn't possible unless you hack
> Gedit to "know" every possible text file extension, or check the magic
> on each file in the directory.
> 
> The "propor" way to implement it would be to ask the filesystem
> something like "List all the text files in this directory".  And not,
> btw, "List all the *.txt files in this directory".
> 
> 

I believe the proper thing to do is to leave this service to the operating
system (prob. the VFS) and to application programmers. The filesystem can be
very good/fast at finding objects that end in some 'extension,' but any more
understanding about objects should be handled 'above' the (a particular)
filesystem.

Re: Fibration questions

[David Masover]

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David Dabbs wrote:
|>-----Original Message-----
|>From: David Masover [mailto:ninja@slaphack.com]
|>Sent: Sunday, July 18, 2004 11:24 PM
|>To: Hans Reiser
|>Cc: David Dabbs; reiserfs-list@namesys.com
|>
|>Hans Reiser wrote:
|>[...]
|>| If FS naming was better designed, filenames would not have extensions.
|>| I prefer to first better design naming, and then not need to optimize
|>| the API for extensions.
|>
|>Still, if we're going to fibrate by file type and want to find a file by
|>file type, there needs to be -- surprise! -- a standard way to determine
|>file type.
|>
|
|
| There be dragons. Despite the fact that I advocated applying fibration
data
| to filesystem queries, the two (fibrating by file type [extension] and
| 'finding a file by file type') are quite different. The former is simply a
| way to bunch/glom/group particular filesystem objects together in the
tree.
| The latter requires metadata beyond that provided by the filesystem
objects
| themselves.

Why beyond?  Ask each fs object (without knowing its name), "What is
your primary type?"  Put like-typed objects together.  Simple.

How do the file objects know what type they are?  After the first atom
is committed, they default to a type based on their magic.  That is, a
file that begins with "#!/usr/bin/perl" is a Perl, a Text file, a
Script, and a Program.  Primarily Perl, so it gets fibrated that way.

This can be optimized -- a file that begins with "#!" is a script, we
know this because the OS does.  If the file doesn't begin with "#!", we
don't need to look at the rest of the line.  And for things which aren't
perl, that's already a simpler check than "does the file end in '.pl'?"

On top of that, we only have to assign the file type once -- at
creation.  For the rest of the file's lifetime, until someone decides to
change its type, the type is a bit of static metadata, as optimized
(fast/small) as file permissions, much faster and smaller than file
extensions.

| This is the kind of thing for which the W3C's SemanticWeb activity might
| advocate OWL/RDF. Possible means aside, the following are among the
| questions the community would need to address:
|
| 1. What is the range of 'file types'?

How many "file types" are there on Windows?  That might be a good place
to start.  They'd just be implemented in a more flexible way.

| 2. The range of known 'file type aliases' (extensions)?

No extensions.  Just file types.  You could name an mp3 file ".doc" and
not fool the system.  The tooltip in GNOME would say "foo.doc -- mpeg
music file" or something similar.

I'm thinking something like MIME, more or less.

| 3. How should applications interpret and buy into this consensus?

The app defines what file types it can deal with, and then only shows
the user files of that type.  It finds the type by looking at ..metas/type.

| 4. At what level is this ontology managed? The OS, VFS, particular
| filesystems?

Reiser4 plugin, at first.  VFS (as in GNOME VFS) would probably be the
next layer up.

| 5. What is a portable metadata storage format that is easily
maintained (and
| shared) by humans and parsed/employed by applications?

Reiser4 metadata.  Possibly a default is set using file magic.  Users
who don't know how to directly access such metadata probably don't
understand extensions anyway -- note that Windows "hides file extensions
by default".  You know it's a word document because the icon is of a
word document and when you go to Word's open dialog, it shows up.
That's the level at which the user understands "file types".

Portable?  I'm hoping that other filesystems start supporting metadata
in a similar way.  Otherwise, this just becomes yet another enhancement
for reiser4-based systems.

In fact, if this is supported in some library (say, at the GNOME VFS
level), it is entirely portable, because it can fall back on extensions
if the metadata isn't supported, and we can fall back on asking for
*.foo if the fs doesn't support a query for "files of type foo".

| Extensions are a convention humans share that are tenuously/inconsistently
| 'understood' by the computers humans use. Under Windows, an installed
| application also installs a 'rule' that associates the application with
| filesystem objects that exhibit certain attributes, e.g. that they end in
| '.foo.'

Under Windows, when I open notepad and go to File->Open, it shows me, by
default, files that end in txt.  When on Windows, I'd use notepad for a
lot more -- editing html files, batch files, and so on.  So I basically
have to use the dropdown menu to select "all files", which means I might
accidently open an mp3 file in Notepad -- I'll certainly have to sort
through mp3 files to get to the .m3u file I wanted.

The main drawback of extensions is that you can't have a file with two
extensions.  Witness things like .tar.bz2 and .tbz2.  You now have an
exception for files that end in .bz2 -- check if the preceding
characters are .tar, and if so, treat it as a .tbz2.  Or, if a file ends
in .tbz2, and we're looking for things we can extract with bzcat (maybe
using tab-completion in Bash), we have to support .tbz2, not to mention
.bzabw -- and easily a dozen more really obscure ones that we don't know
about.

| I believe the proper thing to do is to leave this service to the operating
| system (prob. the VFS) and to application programmers. The filesystem
can be

You don't think a file type is metadata?  And I bet it'd be nice to be
good/fast at finding objects which have a certain property.  Say, a
permission set.  rwx=some_value -- type=some_value -- what's the diff?


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Re: Fibration questions

[Valdis.Kletnieks]

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On Mon, 19 Jul 2004 16:34:14 CDT, David Masover said:

> Why beyond?  Ask each fs object (without knowing its name), "What is
> your primary type?"  Put like-typed objects together.  Simple.

Here there be dragons.  And you just met one. :)

> On top of that, we only have to assign the file type once -- at
> creation.  For the rest of the file's lifetime, until someone decides to
> change its type, the type is a bit of static metadata, as optimized
> (fast/small) as file permissions, much faster and smaller than file
> extensions.

Congrats - combining these two means that (for example) if you slice-n-mice a
script fragment out of a file and save it, and then go back and add that little
'#!/bin/bash' line after the fact, your file now lives WAAAY over there with
all the other *.txt files, rather than over HERE with the other shell scripts.

You think I'm kidding?  Consider the following file found in the syslog-ng-1.6.4 tarball:

[~/src/syslog-ng-1.6.4] head contrib/init.d.RedHat-7.3 
################################################################################
#
# Program: syslog-ng init script for Red Hat
#
################################################################################
# the following information is for use by chkconfig
# if you are want to manage this through chkconfig (as you should), you must
# first must add syslog-ng to chkconfig's list of startup scripts it
# manages by typing:  
#

So you copy that to /etc/init.d - what type is it?  Could be Perl, could be Bash,
and the 'file' command thinks neither:

[~/src/syslog-ng-1.6.4] file contrib/init.d.RedHat-7.3
contrib/init.d.RedHat-7.3: ASCII English text

Wander over to SELinux and see what sort of fun and games you have to play to
do file labelling - and SELinux is able to make simplifying assumptions based on rules
like "All files under this directory are labelled foo_t, and all files in that directory inherit
a label based on their context" (somewhat similar to how files inherit their group-id
on most Unixoids)...

The file_contexts in Fedora is fast approaching 1,600 different regular expressions for
files to assign a label to them.  Large and nasty dragons, indeed....

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RE: Fibration questions

[David Dabbs]

> 
> David Dabbs wrote:
> |>-----Original Message-----
> |>From: David Masover [mailto:ninja@slaphack.com]
> |>Sent: Sunday, July 18, 2004 11:24 PM
> |>To: Hans Reiser
> |>Cc: David Dabbs; reiserfs-list@namesys.com
> |>
> |>Hans Reiser wrote:
> |>[...]
> |>| If FS naming was better designed, filenames would not have extensions.
> |>| I prefer to first better design naming, and then not need to optimize
> |>| the API for extensions.
> |>
> |>Still, if we're going to fibrate by file type and want to find a file by
> |>file type, there needs to be -- surprise! -- a standard way to determine
> |>file type.
> |>
> |
> |
> | There be dragons. Despite the fact that I advocated applying fibration
> data
> | to filesystem queries, the two (fibrating by file type [extension] and
> | 'finding a file by file type') are quite different. The former is simply
> a
> | way to bunch/glom/group particular filesystem objects together in the
> tree.
> | The latter requires metadata beyond that provided by the filesystem
> objects
> | themselves.
> 
> Why beyond?  Ask each fs object (without knowing its name), "What is
> your primary type?"  Put like-typed objects together.  Simple.
> 
> How do the file objects know what type they are?  After the first atom
> is committed, they default to a type based on their magic.  That is, a
> file that begins with "#!/usr/bin/perl" is a Perl, a Text file, a
> Script, and a Program.  Primarily Perl, so it gets fibrated that way.
> 
[David Dabbs] 
The files don't really know their type. The filesystem/OS is deducing this,
yes?

> This can be optimized -- a file that begins with "#!" is a script, we
> know this because the OS does.  If the file doesn't begin with "#!", we
> don't need to look at the rest of the line.  And for things which aren't
> perl, that's already a simpler check than "does the file end in '.pl'?"
> 
> On top of that, we only have to assign the file type once -- at
> creation.  For the rest of the file's lifetime, until someone decides to
> change its type, the type is a bit of static metadata, as optimized
> (fast/small) as file permissions, much faster and smaller than file
> extensions.
> 
[David Dabbs] 
True, but this would need to be recomputed when some process changes the
file contents that contributed to the initial type signature.


> | This is the kind of thing for which the W3C's SemanticWeb activity might
> | advocate OWL/RDF. Possible means aside, the following are among the
> | questions the community would need to address:
> |
> | 1. What is the range of 'file types'?
> 
> How many "file types" are there on Windows?  That might be a good place
> to start.  They'd just be implemented in a more flexible way.
> 
[David Dabbs] 
...and Unix, etc. Anyway, when you get down to it, and leaving out
encodings, there are really only two essential file types: text and binary.
From there, you move into 'abstract' types based upon these. Using text as
an example, you might have an abstract type such as 'XML,' which would be
any text/* or application/* (using MIME) that is known to be based on an XML
format. After that, you get to application-specific types.

> | 2. The range of known 'file type aliases' (extensions)?
> 
> No extensions.  Just file types.  You could name an mp3 file ".doc" and
> not fool the system.  The tooltip in GNOME would say "foo.doc -- mpeg
> music file" or something similar.
> 
> I'm thinking something like MIME, more or less.
> 
> | 3. How should applications interpret and buy into this consensus?
> 
> The app defines what file types it can deal with, and then only shows
> the user files of that type.  It finds the type by looking at
> ..metas/type.
>
[David Dabbs] 
True. But in today's extension-based 'consensus,' there is no coordination
required between _anyone_ if some enterprising developer creates a great new
file format for, say, music files. Applications that decide to consume these
files simply add *.foo to the list of files presented to users. Using
metas/type, file type creators and application developers would need to
share and maintain consistent type IDs/signatures namespace. I'm not against
what you're proposing, just trying to consider possible issues in
implementing it.
 
> | 4. At what level is this ontology managed? The OS, VFS, particular
> | filesystems?
> 
> Reiser4 plugin, at first.  VFS (as in GNOME VFS) would probably be the
> next layer up.
> 
[David Dabbs] 
While I'm a reiser4 'true believer,' other VFS filesystems do and will
continue to exist. Might an application developer's job be complicated if
not every filesystem for which it presents a file list supports metas or
some means to query file objects' type?

> | 5. What is a portable metadata storage format that is easily
> maintained (and
> | shared) by humans and parsed/employed by applications?
> 
> Reiser4 metadata.  Possibly a default is set using file magic.  Users
> who don't know how to directly access such metadata probably don't
> understand extensions anyway -- note that Windows "hides file extensions
> by default".  You know it's a word document because the icon is of a
> word document and when you go to Word's open dialog, it shows up.
> That's the level at which the user understands "file types".
> 
> Portable?  I'm hoping that other filesystems start supporting metadata
> in a similar way.  Otherwise, this just becomes yet another enhancement
> for reiser4-based systems.
>
> In fact, if this is supported in some library (say, at the GNOME VFS
> level), it is entirely portable, because it can fall back on extensions
> if the metadata isn't supported, and we can fall back on asking for
> *.foo if the fs doesn't support a query for "files of type foo".
> 
> | Extensions are a convention humans share that are
> tenuously/inconsistently
> | 'understood' by the computers humans use. Under Windows, an installed
> | application also installs a 'rule' that associates the application with
> | filesystem objects that exhibit certain attributes, e.g. that they end
> in
> | '.foo.'
> 
> Under Windows, when I open notepad and go to File->Open, it shows me, by
> default, files that end in txt.  When on Windows, I'd use notepad for a
> lot more -- editing html files, batch files, and so on.  So I basically
> have to use the dropdown menu to select "all files", which means I might
> accidently open an mp3 file in Notepad -- I'll certainly have to sort
> through mp3 files to get to the .m3u file I wanted.
> 
> The main drawback of extensions is that you can't have a file with two
> extensions.  Witness things like .tar.bz2 and .tbz2.  You now have an
> exception for files that end in .bz2 -- check if the preceding
> characters are .tar, and if so, treat it as a .tbz2.  Or, if a file ends
> in .tbz2, and we're looking for things we can extract with bzcat (maybe
> using tab-completion in Bash), we have to support .tbz2, not to mention
> .bzabw -- and easily a dozen more really obscure ones that we don't know
> about.
> 
> | I believe the proper thing to do is to leave this service to the
> operating
> | system (prob. the VFS) and to application programmers. The filesystem
> can be
> 
> You don't think a file type is metadata?  And I bet it'd be nice to be
> good/fast at finding objects which have a certain property.  Say, a
> permission set.  rwx=some_value -- type=some_value -- what's the diff?
> 
> 

[David Dabbs] 
I do think a file type is metadata. And it would certainly be nice to search
by and (quickly) find a file by its type. But I think the APIs, etc. above
the filesystem(s) will first need to incorporate a notion of type. Until
applications/users start screaming for filesystem type attributes/queries,
the fs overhead and effort involved to figure it out doesn't really seem
worth it.

Going back to your original response to Hans's comment:

> |>Still, if we're going to fibrate by file type and want to find a file by
> |>file type, there needs to be -- surprise! -- a standard way to determine
> |>file type.

What I (we) originally started out exploring was using fibration plugin
flexibility to group files beyond one character of the file name, which is
unfortunately the best, shared means for file typing we have today. If
you're interested in a more robust type system and its use in fibration,
then 'Just try it!' That's what one of the reiser4 developers suggested to
me. 

One thing to note when coming up with a fibration-compatible type signature
is that r4's key structure only provides 7 bits with which to work. I'd bet
that there are many more than 7 bits worth of distinct file types out there.


Cheers,

David

Re: Fibration questions

[Hans Reiser]

David Dabbs wrote:

>
>While I'm a reiser4 'true believer,' other VFS filesystems do and will
>continue to exist. Might an application developer's job be complicated if
>not every filesystem for which it presents a file list supports metas or
>some means to query file objects' type?
>
>  
>
>>| 
>>
>
>
>
>
>  
>
Maybe I should start describing reiser4 as a VFS layer enhancement, and 
indicate that the plugins are the FS, and then reiser4 can be a linux 
standard.;-)

Hans

Re: Fibration questions

[David Masover]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1



David Dabbs wrote:
|>David Dabbs wrote:
[...]
| [David Dabbs]
| The files don't really know their type. The filesystem/OS is deducing
this,
| yes?

Yes and no.  Yes, at first, to support apps which don't set a type on
files they create.  No, because after the type has been set to some
default, it only changes "manually" -- if the user or an app decides the
type should change.

|>This can be optimized -- a file that begins with "#!" is a script, we
|>know this because the OS does.  If the file doesn't begin with "#!", we
|>don't need to look at the rest of the line.  And for things which aren't
|>perl, that's already a simpler check than "does the file end in '.pl'?"
|>
|>On top of that, we only have to assign the file type once -- at
|>creation.  For the rest of the file's lifetime, until someone decides to
|>change its type, the type is a bit of static metadata, as optimized
|>(fast/small) as file permissions, much faster and smaller than file
|>extensions.
|>
|
| [David Dabbs]
| True, but this would need to be recomputed when some process changes the
| file contents that contributed to the initial type signature.

Not really.  I mean, yes, to be perfectly consistent.  But no, because
if I named a file '.pl', and then changed its contents to a shell
script, I have to rename it to a '.sh' anyway.  So I'd probably change
its type somewhere in there anyway.  It would probably be an acceptable
performance hit for vim to request that the fs try and re-type (scan the
~ magic) at every write.  Just not for, say, mysql, for which the file
type is static but there are tons of writes.

| [David Dabbs]
| True. But in today's extension-based 'consensus,' there is no coordination
| required between _anyone_ if some enterprising developer creates a
great new
| file format for, say, music files. Applications that decide to consume
these

True, but it's clumsy.  Read on:

| files simply add *.foo to the list of files presented to users. Using

So if I made a text format with extension foo, and Notepad decided to
consume it, and then someone made a video format with extension foo,
then Notepad now shows me files that it doesn't know what to do with.

Also, file types are "associated" in Windows, and users expect to be
able to click on a file from the Windows Explorer and have it open in
the right app.

| metas/type, file type creators and application developers would need to
| share and maintain consistent type IDs/signatures namespace. I'm not
against

No, not any more than above.  If such things could be altered during
runtime, an app really only has to register on the local machine.  Yeah,
you'd want to share and maintain it, but it'd be possible to write type
names and signatures that are much less ambiguous than three-letter
extensions -- especially because, since a file can have multiple types
but only one primary, you can always name the primary file type
'<yourname>-<appname>-<description>' or something.  Behind the scenes,
the names all get mapped to a number anyway, so there's no performance hit.

| [David Dabbs]
| While I'm a reiser4 'true believer,' other VFS filesystems do and will
| continue to exist. Might an application developer's job be complicated if
| not every filesystem for which it presents a file list supports metas or
| some means to query file objects' type?

Application developer, no.  VFS developer, yes.  Unless Reiser4 becomes
a standard, the easiest way to go is to use an existing VFS or some kind
of library to get the file type.  So app X could use Gnome VFS, and
Gnome VFS could use file extensions if reiser4 wasn't available.

| [David Dabbs]
| I do think a file type is metadata. And it would certainly be nice to
search
| by and (quickly) find a file by its type. But I think the APIs, etc. above
| the filesystem(s) will first need to incorporate a notion of type. Until
| applications/users start screaming for filesystem type attributes/queries,
| the fs overhead and effort involved to figure it out doesn't really seem

Not much fs overhead.  Effort involved to figure it out seems to mostly
be me trying to express myself ;) although I acknowledge that it may be
non-trivial to implement.

| worth it.

Is it really worth it to have a ..metas dir when we already have xattrs?
~ Not yet -- I don't use either.  Eventually, when apps start to support
..metas, it will be very much worth it.

Also, until the FS supports a notion of type, either we're building a
layer on top of it (VFS) or using a crude hack (extensions).  As long as
the hack is available, btw, no one will try to solve the problem the
right way.

And I don't know about Gnome VFS, but Nautilus already supports a notion
of type.  It's just very centrallized and based on extensions.  Wouldn't
be too hard to port to fs-based types.

| One thing to note when coming up with a fibration-compatible type
signature
| is that r4's key structure only provides 7 bits with which to work.
I'd bet
| that there are many more than 7 bits worth of distinct file types out
there.

Maybe this has moved beyond fibration :P
Or maybe fibration would be better handled by the grosser types --
"text", "script", "video", "audio", "binary", "library"...  Of course
you'd need a central list.  Which is what we've got right now, only it
uses a handful of very common extensions.

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Re: Fibration questions

[Hans Reiser]

David Masover wrote:

>
>
> Why beyond?  Ask each fs object (without knowing its name), "What is
> your primary type?"  Put like-typed objects together.  Simple.

Except that at look up time all you know is the name, and if the type is 
not in the name then you cannot fibrate by it.

Hans

Re: Fibration questions

[David Masover]

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Hash: SHA1



Hans Reiser wrote:
| David Masover wrote:
|
|> Why beyond?  Ask each fs object (without knowing its name), "What is
|> your primary type?"  Put like-typed objects together.  Simple.
|
| Except that at look up time all you know is the name, and if the type is
| not in the name then you cannot fibrate by it.

I must not understand fibration.  Do you have to know the fibration of
an object to find it?


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RE: Fibration questions

[David Dabbs]

> 
> Hans Reiser wrote:
> | David Masover wrote:
> |
> |> Why beyond?  Ask each fs object (without knowing its name), "What is
> |> your primary type?"  Put like-typed objects together.  Simple.
> |
> | Except that at look up time all you know is the name, and if the type is
> | not in the name then you cannot fibrate by it.
> 
> I must not understand fibration.  Do you have to know the fibration of
> an object to find it?
> 

Fibration is simply a means to physically group together filesystem objects
you want grouped together, or perhaps more likely, separated from some other
group. I muddied the waters by proposing that the fibration bits might be
gainfully employed as a quick and dirty to test whether an object had a
particular extension. 

Here is the schematic for directory item keys with which you are probably
familiar. The file /etc/foo will have the dirid for /etc as key.el[0], the
first 7 characters of the file name in key.el[1]. etc. Fibration, if
enabled, assigns a 'fibre' as the 7 high bits of the second key element,
thus acting like 'GROUP BY' for those file names that end up generating the
same fibre bits using the configured fibration plugin. See below.

David


/*
*   KEY ASSIGNMENT: PLAN A, LONG KEYS.
*
* DIRECTORY ITEMS
*
|       60     | 4 | 7 |1|   56        |        64        |        64
+--------------+---+---+-+-------------+------------------+----------------+
|    dirid     | 0 | F |H|  prefix-1   |    prefix-2      |  prefix-3/hash |
+--------------+---+---+-+-------------+------------------+----------------+
|                  |                   |                  |                |
|    8 bytes       |      8 bytes      |     8 bytes      |     8 bytes    |


 dirid         objectid of directory this item is for

 F             fibration, see fs/reiser4/plugin/fibration.[ch] (BELOW)

 H             1 if last 8 bytes of the key contain hash,
               0 if last 8 bytes of the key contain prefix-3

 prefix-1      first 7 characters of file name.
               Padded by zeroes if name is not long enough.

 prefix-2      next 8 characters of the file name.

 prefix-3      next 8 characters of the file name.

 hash          hash of the rest of file name (i.e., portion of file
               name not included into prefix-1 and prefix-2).

 File names shorter than 23 (== 7 + 8 + 8) characters are completely encoded
 in the key. Such file names are called "short". They are distinguished by H
 bit set in the key.

 Other file names are "long". For long name, H bit is 0, and first 15 (== 7
 + 8) characters are encoded in prefix-1 and prefix-2 portions of the
 key. Last 8 bytes of the key are occupied by hash of the remaining
 characters of the name.

 This key assignment reaches following important goals:

     (1) directory entries are sorted in approximately lexicographical
     order.

     (2) collisions (when multiple directory items have the same key), while
     principally unavoidable in a tree with fixed length keys, are rare.


/***************************** fibration.c ****************************/
/* Copyright 2004 by Hans Reiser, licensing governed by
 * reiser4/README */

/*
 * Suppose we have a directory tree with sources of some project. During
 * compilation .o files are created within this tree. This makes access
 * to the original source files less efficient, because source files are
 * now "diluted" by object files: default directory plugin uses prefix
 * of a file name as a part of the key for directory entry (and this
 * part is also inherited by the key of file body). This means that
 * foo.o will be located close to foo.c and foo.h in the tree.
 *
 * To avoid this effect directory plugin fills highest 7 (unused
 * originally) bits of the second component of the directory entry key
 * by bit-pattern depending on the file name (see
 * fs/reiser4/kassign.c:build_entry_key_common()). These bits are called
 * "fibre". Fibre of the file name key is inherited by key of stat data
 * and keys of file body (in the case of REISER4_LARGE_KEY).
 *
 * Fibre for a given file is chosen by per-directory fibration
 * plugin. Names within given fibre are ordered lexicographically.
 */

static const int fibre_shift = 57;

#define FIBRE_NO(n) (((__u64)(n)) << fibre_shift)

/*
 * Trivial fibration: all files of directory are just ordered
 * lexicographically.
 */
static __u64 fibre_trivial(const struct inode *dir, const char *name, int
len)
{
	return FIBRE_NO(0);
}

/*
 * dot-o fibration: place .o files after all others.
 */
static __u64 fibre_dot_o(const struct inode *dir, const char *name, int len)
{
	/* special treatment for .*\.o */
	if (len > 2 && name[len - 1] == 'o' && name[len - 2] == '.')
		return FIBRE_NO(1);
	else
		return FIBRE_NO(0);
}

/*
 * ext.1 fibration: subdivide directory into 128 fibrations one for each
 * 7bit extension character (file "foo.h" goes into fibre "h"), plus
 * default fibre for the rest.
 */
static __u64 fibre_ext_1(const struct inode *dir, const char *name, int len)
{
	if (len > 2 && name[len - 2] == '.')
		return FIBRE_NO(name[len - 1]);
	else
		return FIBRE_NO(0);
}

/*
 * ext.3 fibration: try to separate files with different 3-character
 * extensions from each other.
 */
static __u64 fibre_ext_3(const struct inode *dir, const char *name, int len)
{
	if (len > 4 && name[len - 4] == '.')
		return FIBRE_NO(name[len - 3] + name[len - 2] + name[len -
1]);
	else
		return FIBRE_NO(0);
}

Re: Fibration questions

[David Masover]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1




David Dabbs wrote:
|>Hans Reiser wrote:
|>| David Masover wrote:
|>|
|>|> Why beyond?  Ask each fs object (without knowing its name), "What is
|>|> your primary type?"  Put like-typed objects together.  Simple.
|>|
|>| Except that at look up time all you know is the name, and if the type is
|>| not in the name then you cannot fibrate by it.
|>
|>I must not understand fibration.  Do you have to know the fibration of
|>an object to find it?
|>
|
|
| Fibration is simply a means to physically group together filesystem
objects
=>> MEGA SNIP <<=

So, what you're trying to say is, yes, because it's part of the key?



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RE: Fibration questions

[David Dabbs]

> |>
> |>I must not understand fibration.  Do you have to know the fibration of
> |>an object to find it?
> |>
> |
> | Fibration is simply a means to physically group together filesystem
> objects
> =>> MEGA SNIP <<=
> 
> So, what you're trying to say is, yes, because it's part of the key?
> 

No, not really, at least you (as a filesystem client) don't specify the
fibration when searching for an object. Yes, when the key is generated, of
course the fibration bits matter, but they simply come from a blackbox
plugin function that simply operates on the name and which may differ per
directory. As Hans pointed out, there may be an opportunity to offer some
explicit support for * via the syscall interface -- as to whether or not the
implementation would even involve fibration is open for discussion.

It seems like we are violently agreeing, as my father sometimes says. I too
think it would be great to have an enhanced or more structured typing
system. And it would be interesting to work on at some point, but not just
yet, for me at least. There's still so much to learn about what's here.
Anyway, I've kind of lost track of what it is you were looking to accomplish
in the thread. 

Best,

David

Re: Fibration questions

[David Masover]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1




David Dabbs wrote:
|>|>
|>|>I must not understand fibration.  Do you have to know the fibration of
|>|>an object to find it?
|>|>
|>|
|>| Fibration is simply a means to physically group together filesystem
|>objects
|>=>> MEGA SNIP <<=
|>
|>So, what you're trying to say is, yes, because it's part of the key?
|>
|
|
| No, not really, at least you (as a filesystem client) don't specify the
| fibration when searching for an object. Yes, when the key is generated, of
| course the fibration bits matter, but they simply come from a blackbox
| plugin function that simply operates on the name and which may differ per

Thus, a fibration plugin must rely on the name to decide how to fibrate
something, because at lookup time, this plugin is asked "I'm looking for
a file named foo, how is that fibrated?"

| directory. As Hans pointed out, there may be an opportunity to offer some
| explicit support for * via the syscall interface -- as to whether or
not the
| implementation would even involve fibration is open for discussion.

It might.  If I'm looking for *.foo and fibration is by last character
in filename, then the system knows to only look in the *o files.

So it's an optimization for it to involve fibration.  But whether it
could be done elegantly, I don't pretend to know.

| It seems like we are violently agreeing, as my father sometimes says.
I too
| think it would be great to have an enhanced or more structured typing
| system. And it would be interesting to work on at some point, but not just
| yet, for me at least. There's still so much to learn about what's here.

I agree.  I'd much rather get the practical things done -- a stable
release, inclusion in distros, patches to common apps.

Also, I think I want to reimplement (a subset of) Lustre using reiser4
as a cache.  If I do any coding, it'll be on that.

| Anyway, I've kind of lost track of what it is you were looking to
accomplish
| in the thread.

So far, I'm experimenting with ideas.  My real goal is to learn, because
in the months that I've been on this list, I've discovered two things:

It's usually fine the way it is.

The best way to learn more about it is to suggest a change.

If I stumble on a *good* change idea, so much the better!



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RE: Fibration questions

[David Dabbs]

> |
> | No, not really, at least you (as a filesystem client) don't specify the
> | fibration when searching for an object. Yes, when the key is generated,
> of
> | course the fibration bits matter, but they simply come from a blackbox
> | plugin function that simply operates on the name and which may differ
> per
> 
> Thus, a fibration plugin must rely on the name to decide how to fibrate
> something, because at lookup time, this plugin is asked "I'm looking for
> a file named foo, how is that fibrated?"
> 
> | directory. As Hans pointed out, there may be an opportunity to offer
> some
> | explicit support for * via the syscall interface -- as to whether or
> not the
> | implementation would even involve fibration is open for discussion.
> 
> It might.  If I'm looking for *.foo and fibration is by last character
> in filename, then the system knows to only look in the *o files.
> 

Yes, which is where I started off. BTW, the default fibration plugin uses
the last filename character when period is the preceding character, though
that's the joy of plugins -- one can do whatever one wants! 


> | yet, for me at least. There's still so much to learn about what's here.
> 
> I agree.  I'd much rather get the practical things done -- a stable
> release, inclusion in distros, patches to common apps.
> 
> Also, I think I want to reimplement (a subset of) Lustre using reiser4
> as a cache.  If I do any coding, it'll be on that.
> 

I'll have to look into that more, too. So many things to do, so little time
to have fun.


David

Re: Fibration questions

[mjt]

On Wed, Jul 21, 2004 at 01:36:15AM -0500, David Dabbs wrote:
>> Also, I think I want to reimplement (a subset of) Lustre using reiser4
>> as a cache.  If I do any coding, it'll be on that.
>I'll have to look into that more, too. So many things to do, so little time
>to have fun.

This is going off-topic but still...

Do any of the Namesys guys want to comment on a reiser4-janitors list?
I think it'd be a great idea and people would get to learn the code
by really working it.

This would make it easier for people to implement stuff like the
aforementioned Lustre subset, new plugins, chdir to -x files or something.
Or help Namesys if they get around to doing this stuff first ;)

Also, would reiser4-newbies be a better list for that, would we need two
lists? I think semantically yes, practically no.

-- 
mjt

Re: Fibration questions

[David Masover]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1




Markus Törnqvist wrote:

| I think it'd be a great idea and people would get to learn the code
| by really working it.

I do!  I do!

I've been stumbling around the reiser4 code, trying to make sense of
things.  It looks very clean, very well implemented, sort of allright
documentation -- no idea where to start.

| This would make it easier for people to implement stuff like the
| aforementioned Lustre subset, new plugins, chdir to -x files or something.

I'm thinking of doing said Lustre subset as a more generic facility.  I
definitely want reiser4 support, though, and it'd be really nice to:

- - support remote 'metas' dirs as if they were local
- - have our own area inside 'metas' which is always local, to allow
things like forcing particular files to always be in the cache
- - have almost no speed difference between local cache reads and local fs
reads
- - allow separate caching of different logical pieces of a file, to
sanely allow files which are directories
- - share an fs between a cache and entirely local files

Most of that would be best implemented as some form of plugin.

First question:  Can I manually enable/disable a particular plugin for a
particular directory?  (like how cryptocompress is supposed to be...)

Second question:  Would such a setting be recursive?  Can I tell it
whether to recurse or not?


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Re: Fibration questions

[mjt]

On Wed, Jul 21, 2004 at 11:08:13PM -0500, David Masover wrote:
>- have our own area inside 'metas' which is always local, to allow
>things like forcing particular files to always be in the cache

Hmm. This is interesting. Difficult to wrap my brain around it, though :))
Is it a bit like what I've understoon union mounts to be?
Where would this data be stored, if it's in metas? Stat data on the
local partition that's not bound to a specific file? Wouldn't fsck
now fix that as a broken fs?-)

>First question:  Can I manually enable/disable a particular plugin for a
>particular directory?  (like how cryptocompress is supposed to be...)

Sure, but for example with fibration you can't re-fibrate a directory.
You have to move the stuff out and back in after you've changed the
policy.

With tail policies you must access the file in order to get it moved
out of tails, if you change the formatting to never.

The Namesys Guys may want to correct me on those above notions, if
they're totally wrong.

>Second question:  Would such a setting be recursive?  Can I tell it
>whether to recurse or not?

Isn't this unimplemented, and called hsets? Hereditory Plugin Sets,
or something?

I think I read once that they are different plugins from the current
ones, so that you'd have to write them differently from normal plugins.
It must have been documented somewhere in the Reiser4 source code docs,
can't imagine where else they would have been, so I'll just refresh my
memory when I get home..

Anyway, setting propagation is important, but it's also important to
handle conditions like (cool, pseudo-sql! ;)
UPDATE formatting SET policy='never\0' WHERE policy='smart\0' RECURSE;
instead of just
UPDATE formatting SET policy='never\0' RECURSE;
which may break something else...

-- 
mjt

Re: Fibration questions

[Hans Reiser]

Markus Törnqvist wrote:

>On Wed, Jul 21, 2004 at 11:08:13PM -0500, David Masover wrote:
>  
>
>>- have our own area inside 'metas' which is always local, to allow
>>things like forcing particular files to always be in the cache
>>    
>>
Is this the sticky bit or new?

>
>Hmm. This is interesting. Difficult to wrap my brain around it, though :))
>Is it a bit like what I've understoon union mounts to be?
>Where would this data be stored, if it's in metas? Stat data on the
>local partition that's not bound to a specific file? Wouldn't fsck
>now fix that as a broken fs?-)
>
>  
>
>>First question:  Can I manually enable/disable a particular plugin for a
>>particular directory?  (like how cryptocompress is supposed to be...)
>>    
>>
>
>Sure, but for example with fibration you can't re-fibrate a directory.
>You have to move the stuff out and back in after you've changed the
>policy.
>
>With tail policies you must access the file in order to get it moved
>out of tails, if you change the formatting to never.
>
>The Namesys Guys may want to correct me on those above notions, if
>they're totally wrong.
>  
>
Some plugins are mutable, some are not, and some are mutable when empty 
or some other condition applies.   We should document it for all of them. 

Re: Fibration questions

[David Masover]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1



Markus Törnqvist wrote:

| Anyway, setting propagation is important, but it's also important to
| handle conditions like (cool, pseudo-sql! ;)
| UPDATE formatting SET policy='never\0' WHERE policy='smart\0' RECURSE;
| instead of just
| UPDATE formatting SET policy='never\0' RECURSE;
| which may break something else...

Both should be allowed.  Can that be done now?  And with echo, not SQL.


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Re: Fibration questions

[mjt]

On Thu, Jul 22, 2004 at 09:45:26PM -0500, David Masover wrote:
>| UPDATE formatting SET policy='never\0' WHERE policy='smart\0' RECURSE;
>| instead of just
>| UPDATE formatting SET policy='never\0' RECURSE;
>| which may break something else...
>
>Both should be allowed.  Can that be done now?  And with echo, not SQL.

I can't check now but maybe:

for dir in $(find . -type d); do
  format=$(cat $dir/..metas/plugin/formatting)
  if [ $format == "smart\0" ]; then
    echo -e 'never\0' > $format
    for file in $(find $dir -type f); do
      cat file > /dev/null
    done
  fi
done

IIRC the access required to change the file's formatting policy on the
file system was read-only. If you actually had to change something, replace
cat with chmod +x && chmod -x or something.

Namesys guys want to comment?-)

-- 
mjt

Re: Fibration questions

[David Masover]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1




Markus Törnqvist wrote:
| On Thu, Jul 22, 2004 at 09:45:26PM -0500, David Masover wrote:
|
|>| UPDATE formatting SET policy='never\0' WHERE policy='smart\0' RECURSE;
|>| instead of just
|>| UPDATE formatting SET policy='never\0' RECURSE;
|>| which may break something else...
|>
|>Both should be allowed.  Can that be done now?  And with echo, not SQL.
|
|
| I can't check now but maybe:
|
| for dir in $(find . -type d); do
|   format=$(cat $dir/..metas/plugin/formatting)
|   if [ $format == "smart\0" ]; then
|     echo -e 'never\0' > $format
|     for file in $(find $dir -type f); do
|       cat file > /dev/null
|     done
|   fi
| done

I was thinking a plugin.  Also, "metas" is _still_ the default on the
auto snapshots.  I change it to '...' whenever I feel like looking at
the code.

"find -type d" would most likely not work.  I'm thinking of an attribute
which would apply to every type of object, including files, also files
which are directories, and so on.  Mainly just a few flags -- right now
I'm thinking "never purge me from cache" and "I'm a stub; if something
actually tries accessing me, pull me from the network."


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Re: Fibration questions

[Vitaly Fertman]

> First question:  Can I manually enable/disable a particular plugin for a
> particular directory?  (like how cryptocompress is supposed to be...)

you can change a plugin for a file if it does not destroy its structure. 
Thus for an empty directory you can :
	# cat somedir/metas/plugin/hash ; echo
	1 r5 r5 hash
	# echo -e "tea\0" > somedir/metas/plugin/hash
	# cat somedir/metas/plugin/hash ; echo
	2 tea tea hash

> Second question:  Would such a setting be recursive?  Can I tell it
> whether to recurse or not?

plugins are inherited at the creation time from the parent of the object 
being created. Thus in the above example all subdirs would have the
hash r5 before changing the 'somedir' hash to 'tea' and will have the
'tea' hash after.

-- 
Thanks,
Vitaly Fertman

Re: Fibration questions

[David Masover]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1




Vitaly Fertman wrote:
|>First question:  Can I manually enable/disable a particular plugin for a
|>particular directory?  (like how cryptocompress is supposed to be...)
|
|
| you can change a plugin for a file if it does not destroy its structure.
| Thus for an empty directory you can :
| 	# cat somedir/metas/plugin/hash ; echo
| 	1 r5 r5 hash
| 	# echo -e "tea\0" > somedir/metas/plugin/hash
| 	# cat somedir/metas/plugin/hash ; echo
| 	2 tea tea hash
|
|
|>Second question:  Would such a setting be recursive?  Can I tell it
|>whether to recurse or not?
|
|
| plugins are inherited at the creation time from the parent of the object
| being created. Thus in the above example all subdirs would have the
| hash r5 before changing the 'somedir' hash to 'tea' and will have the
| 'tea' hash after.

wait -- what does this do:
echo -e "tea\0" > somedir/metas/plugin/hash
echo -e "something_differenet\0" > somedir/subdir/metas/plugins/hash
echo -e "r5\0" > somedir/metas/plugins/hash

What is the hash of "subdir" now?

What about new subdirs?  What hash will they get?



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Re: Fibration questions

[Vitaly Fertman]

> wait -- what does this do:
> echo -e "tea\0" > somedir/metas/plugin/hash

will set the hash tea in 'somedir' if it is empty.
if it has 'subdir' already, nothing happens.

> echo -e "something_differenet\0" > somedir/subdir/metas/plugins/hash

will set the hash 'something_differenet' if any of [r5 | tea | fnv1 | 
rupasov | degenerate hash | all future hash plugins] in 'somedir/subdir' 
if 'subdir' is empty.

> echo -e "r5\0" > somedir/metas/plugins/hash

nothing happens as 'subdir' exists.

> What is the hash of "subdir" now?

'somthing_different'

> What about new subdirs?  What hash will they get?

new subobjects inherit all plugins from the object they are created 
in at the creation time. future changes of plugins of the object will 
not be applied to already created subobjects, only to new subobjects.

Note: if a plugin is used for rendering the object content then its 
changing needs a convertion method. Thus if you create a file in 
the dir then the hash plugin gets used, and you need to convert the 
dir to change the hash successfully. As there is no such convertion 
methods yet, you cannot change the hash of not empty dir.

-- 
Thanks,
Vitaly Fertman

Re: Fibration questions

[Hans Reiser]

Vitaly Fertman wrote:

>>wait -- what does this do:
>>echo -e "tea\0" > somedir/metas/plugin/hash
>>    
>>
>
>will set the hash tea in 'somedir' if it is empty.
>if it has 'subdir' already, nothing happens.
>
>  
>
>>echo -e "something_differenet\0" > somedir/subdir/metas/plugins/hash
>>    
>>
>
>will set the hash 'something_differenet' if any of [r5 | tea | fnv1 | 
>rupasov | degenerate hash | all future hash plugins] in 'somedir/subdir' 
>if 'subdir' is empty.
>  
>
is something_different constrained to

 [r5 | tea | fnv1 | rupasov | degenerate hash | some future hash plugin existing at time of command]

?

(I hope so.)

>  
>
>>echo -e "r5\0" > somedir/metas/plugins/hash
>>    
>>
>
>nothing happens as 'subdir' exists.
>
>  
>
>>What is the hash of "subdir" now?
>>    
>>
>
>'somthing_different'
>
>  
>
>>What about new subdirs?  What hash will they get?
>>    
>>
>
>new subobjects inherit all plugins from the object they are created 
>in at the creation time. future changes of plugins of the object will 
>not be applied to already created subobjects, only to new subobjects.
>
>Note: if a plugin is used for rendering the object content then its 
>changing needs a convertion method. Thus if you create a file in 
>the dir then the hash plugin gets used, and you need to convert the 
>dir to change the hash successfully. As there is no such convertion 
>methods yet, you cannot change the hash of not empty dir.
>
>  
>

Re: Fibration questions

[Vitaly Fertman]

On Monday 26 July 2004 10:28, Hans Reiser wrote:
> Vitaly Fertman wrote:
> >>wait -- what does this do:
> >>echo -e "tea\0" > somedir/metas/plugin/hash
> >
> >will set the hash tea in 'somedir' if it is empty.
> >if it has 'subdir' already, nothing happens.
> >
> >>echo -e "something_differenet\0" > somedir/subdir/metas/plugins/hash
> >
> >will set the hash 'something_differenet' if any of [r5 | tea | fnv1 |
> >rupasov | degenerate hash | all future hash plugins] in 'somedir/subdir'
> >if 'subdir' is empty.
>
> is something_different constrained to
>
>  [r5 | tea | fnv1 | rupasov | degenerate hash | some future hash plugin
> existing at time of command]
>
> ?

yes, right.

-- 
Thanks,
Vitaly Fertman

Re: Fibration questions

[Christian Mayrhuber]

On Thursday 22 July 2004 12:10, Vitaly Fertman wrote:
> > First question:  Can I manually enable/disable a particular plugin for a
> > particular directory?  (like how cryptocompress is supposed to be...)
>
> you can change a plugin for a file if it does not destroy its structure.
> Thus for an empty directory you can :
> 	# cat somedir/metas/plugin/hash ; echo
> 	1 r5 r5 hash
> 	# echo -e "tea\0" > somedir/metas/plugin/hash

So if one does 
# echo -e "tea" > somedir/metas/plugin/hash
it can crash reiser4, because of a non terminated C string?

It would be a good idea if the meta filesystem interface always auto 
terminates strings (add + '\0') issued by echo. procfs does it that way.

-- 
lg, Chris

Re: Fibration questions

[mjt]

On Fri, Jul 23, 2004 at 11:59:23AM +0200, Christian Mayrhuber wrote:
>It would be a good idea if the meta filesystem interface always auto 
>terminates strings (add + '\0') issued by echo. procfs does it that way.

Or add a small parser that allows \n so that cat output would look
better...

-- 
mjt

Re: Fibration questions

[David Masover]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1



Markus Törnqvist wrote:
| On Fri, Jul 23, 2004 at 11:59:23AM +0200, Christian Mayrhuber wrote:
|
|>It would be a good idea if the meta filesystem interface always auto
|>terminates strings (add + '\0') issued by echo. procfs does it that way.
|
|
| Or add a small parser that allows \n so that cat output would look
| better...

And remove \n from input so we could really just do "echo foo >
metas/bar" with no worries.

Amen, if it could be done for only access through the "open" system
call.  That is, if someone wants speed, they'll use sys_reiser4, and if
they use sys_reiser4, they want speed -- thus sys_reiser4 would not add
\0 or add/remove \n.


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Re: Fibration questions

[mjt]

On Fri, Jul 23, 2004 at 11:59:23AM +0200, Christian Mayrhuber wrote:
>
>So if one does 
># echo -e "tea" > somedir/metas/plugin/hash
>it can crash reiser4, because of a non terminated C string?

I also meant to say that Reiser4 just silently ignores the request,
at least last time I checked...

-- 
mjt

Re: Fibration questions

[Hans Reiser]

David Masover wrote:

>
>
> Thus, a fibration plugin must rely on the name to decide how to fibrate
> something, because at lookup time, this plugin is asked "I'm looking for
> a file named foo, how is that fibrated?"

Yes.

>
>
>
> Also, I think I want to reimplement (a subset of) Lustre using reiser4
> as a cache.  If I do any coding, it'll be on that.

You might ask nikita if that is what they hired him away from us for.....

>
>

Re: Fibration questions

[Nikita Danilov]

Hans Reiser writes:
 > David Masover wrote:
 > 
 > >
 > >
 > > Thus, a fibration plugin must rely on the name to decide how to fibrate
 > > something, because at lookup time, this plugin is asked "I'm looking for
 > > a file named foo, how is that fibrated?"
 > 
 > Yes.
 > 
 > >
 > >
 > >
 > > Also, I think I want to reimplement (a subset of) Lustre using reiser4
 > > as a cache.  If I do any coding, it'll be on that.
 > 
 > You might ask nikita if that is what they hired him away from us for.....
 > 

Nope. :)

Ask Peter Braam (braam@clusterfs.com), whether he has any plans to use
reiser4 as a back-end.

This shouldn't be hard to implement, technically.

 > >
 > >
 > 

Nikita.

Re: Fibration questions

[mjt]

On Thu, Jul 22, 2004 at 04:16:06PM +0400, Nikita Danilov wrote:
>Ask Peter Braam (braam@clusterfs.com), whether he has any plans to use
>reiser4 as a back-end.
>This shouldn't be hard to implement, technically.

Maybe a chance to bleed some Dell, Cray, HP and DataDirect money
to Namesys ;)

Has Namesys contacted these guys, btw, and asked for sponsorship?
They are probably all companies with more money than they'd know how
to spend and they'd benefit from having the best filesystem ever.

-- 
mjt

Re: Fibration questions

[Hans Reiser]

Markus Törnqvist wrote:

>On Thu, Jul 22, 2004 at 04:16:06PM +0400, Nikita Danilov wrote:
>  
>
>>Ask Peter Braam (braam@clusterfs.com), whether he has any plans to use
>>reiser4 as a back-end.
>>This shouldn't be hard to implement, technically.
>>    
>>
>
>Maybe a chance to bleed some Dell, Cray, HP and DataDirect money
>to Namesys ;)
>
>Has Namesys contacted these guys, btw, and asked for sponsorship?
>  
>
No.

>They are probably all companies with more money than they'd know how
>to spend and they'd benefit from having the best filesystem ever.
>
>  
>
The world is filled with companies with money.  Getting them to part 
with it is more work than you might think.

Re: Fibration questions

[mjt]

On Thu, Jul 22, 2004 at 11:17:14AM -0700, Hans Reiser wrote:

>The world is filled with companies with money.  Getting them to part 
>with it is more work than you might think.

One of the main reasons I'm not a businessman is that it must be frustrating
as hell, and hanging around in this project only seems to verify that
suspicion.

But I also think that there are no means too desperate, like, I wouldn't
think twice about trying, because every now and then trying has paid off.
Even sometimes the desired results have come easier than suspected.

I'm of course not trying to be presumptuous or anything, I just wondered
if there's a potential here...

-- 
mjt

Re: Fibration questions

[Valdis.Kletnieks]

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On Thu, 22 Jul 2004 17:39:09 +0300, Markus =?UNKNOWN?Q?T=F6rnqvist?= said:

> Maybe a chance to bleed some Dell, Cray, HP and DataDirect money
> to Namesys ;)

Cray is still in business? ;)

> Has Namesys contacted these guys, btw, and asked for sponsorship?
> They are probably all companies with more money than they'd know how
> to spend and they'd benefit from having the best filesystem ever.

Umm.. *would* they benefit?  Think it through - if the "best available
filesystem" suddenly gets 30% faster, they end up selling 30% smaller servers -
and there's more profit margin at the high end than at the low end.  So you
can't really get much support from the hardware people (look at how rich Intel
has gotten from Windows bloating every release, and think about it...)



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Re: Fibration questions

[mjt]

On Thu, Jul 22, 2004 at 03:57:32PM -0400, Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:
>Cray is still in business? ;)

I got the name from clusterfs.com ;)

Cray and Cluster File Systems are preparing the Lustre file system for
deployment on the Red Storm supercomputer. 

Red Storm supercomputer.. hmm!

>Umm.. *would* they benefit?  Think it through - if the "best available
>filesystem" suddenly gets 30% faster, they end up selling 30% smaller servers -
>and there's more profit margin at the high end than at the low end.  So you
>can't really get much support from the hardware people (look at how rich Intel
>has gotten from Windows bloating every release, and think about it...)

Well, I think they would.

Guys like Dell deploy big-ass servers, if they shipped it with a super-fast
and advanced secure file system like Reiser4, I very much doubt anyone
would go "Gee, let's buy this smaller model which costs less but that
ships with a slower file system, which also happens to be less secure"

Intel won't stop selling fastest processors to Dell just because Dell ships
something with which they squeeze even more power out of the hardware.

It's all about marketing, I guess. If they had a slogan like "More for
a lesser price - Reiser4!" their sales would not at go down. Besides,
they control the market, they keep pushing out faster and sharper
PowerEdges and there's not a damned thing anyone can do about it,
and they don't want to either, even less if it has a good file system.

Customer companies allocate x currency units for hardware. 
That's what they always do, because x buys them a decent
machine, and decent machines tend to have a constant cost through the ages.
I mean the contemporary power versus money and an upgrade sequence
passing through every few years.

They will not allocate x-y because they want something less. People want 
a system they can trust, and when they buy from Dell, they trust Dell, 
and if Dell has covered its ass in Reiser4 development and ships it, it's
a total win-win situation.

That's my view on things.

-- 
mjt

Re: Fibration questions

[Valdis.Kletnieks]

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On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 00:05:15 +0300, Markus =?UNKNOWN?Q?T=F6rnqvist?= said:

> Guys like Dell deploy big-ass servers, if they shipped it with a super-fast
> and advanced secure file system like Reiser4, I very much doubt anyone
> would go "Gee, let's buy this smaller model which costs less but that
> ships with a slower file system, which also happens to be less secure"

This of course explains why IE is the premier web browser on 95% of the
desktops, right? I mean, it's faster and more secure than all the alternatives,
right? ;)

And how many times has the global RAM market been put under severe strain
because the latest Windows upgrade needed more RAM, so everybody went out and
bought more RAM, and more RAM, and more RAM...

The *correct* model is "Gee, let's buy this new box, because the salesman told
us we need at least a Model 9000 to run this app, and *never* *mentioned* that
with proper tuning, we could actually get by with a Model 6000 that costs half
as much, and makes him half as much in sales commission....".

I mean.. *seriously* - think about it for a moment.  A co-worker recently
spec'ed out a Dell 6600 for a project - paid US$20k or so for that one.  I
needed another server for another project, ended up spec'ing a Dell 2650 for
about US$7k.  Now *what* motivation does Dell have to sell both of us 2650's
rather than trying to talk us both into 6600's?  (As it was, Dell got lucky I didn't
go for a box even *smaller* than a 2650... at $7K, trying to save MORE money
isn't worth it.  And I'm quite sure that Sun wasn't overjoyed when we
replaced an E10K with 2 Sunfire 2900's and a number of Sunfire 240's - they
wanted to sell us a third 2900... ;)

OK... not *all* vendors are like that - Apple likes us.  Probably has something to
do with the fact we bought 1,100+ units in one shot to make a supercomputer.
But then, there's *no* vendors that won't do whatever it takes to land a $5M
deal with lots of good PR attached to it...

But seriously - once the purchase price falls under $1M or so, vendors fast start
losing their desire to bend over backwards to help you out...

Also - in what way, exactly, is Reiser4 "more secure"? (Think carefully about
the Linux security model here, and where the LSM hooks are - almost all of it
happens at the VFS layer.  And there's the whole xattr debacle too...)

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Re: Fibration questions

[mjt]

On Thu, Jul 22, 2004 at 05:36:43PM -0400, Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:
>
>This of course explains why IE is the premier web browser on 95% of the
>desktops, right? I mean, it's faster and more secure than all the alternatives,
>right? ;)

I think desktops for all the Joe Q. Averages are pretty much a different
scene from servers..

>And how many times has the global RAM market been put under severe strain
>because the latest Windows upgrade needed more RAM, so everybody went out and
>bought more RAM, and more RAM, and more RAM...

But Windows isn't the only thing that starts requiring more RAM, and
if you can buy more for a lesser price, that's what you'll do, regardless.

>The *correct* model is "Gee, let's buy this new box, because the salesman told
>us we need at least a Model 9000 to run this app, and *never* *mentioned* that
>with proper tuning, we could actually get by with a Model 6000 that costs half
>as much, and makes him half as much in sales commission....".

But that happens.

Maybe I'm the unexperienced obnoxious adolescent again, as I'm in only
my second job so far, but I've noticed that both employers have the
principle that if you can get anything, even the slightest guarantee,
that something is faster and more stable at a somewhat higher cost, it's 
worth it. Even if you'd be paying for a scapegoat-factor warranty.

OK, the first job didn't last _that_ long because it was a start-up
and started running out of money, so maybe we should have invested
in poorer servers, but then again, we got to see all our competitors
go down in flames. And the company was alive and kicking (with a smaller
staff) until it got bought by a bigger company, so it all ended quite well.

Tune even faster solution and get even more power, it'll last us
all weekend, before it goes obsolete...

>I mean.. *seriously* - think about it for a moment.  A co-worker recently
>spec'ed out a Dell 6600 for a project - paid US$20k or so for that one.  I
>needed another server for another project, ended up spec'ing a Dell 2650 for
>about US$7k.  Now *what* motivation does Dell have to sell both of us 2650's
>rather than trying to talk us both into 6600's?  (As it was, Dell got lucky I didn't
>go for a box even *smaller* than a 2650... at $7K, trying to save MORE money
>isn't worth it.  And I'm quite sure that Sun wasn't overjoyed when we

So a Dell 2650 could have could have handled what the 6600 did?

And they're still selling 6600s, how big an impact would Reiser4's speed
advantage have really on them? But it seems I'm over over my head now :)

But this isn't the only way of trying to get funding from a big company. 
Speed, that is.

>Also - in what way, exactly, is Reiser4 "more secure"? (Think carefully about
>the Linux security model here, and where the LSM hooks are - almost all of it
>happens at the VFS layer.  And there's the whole xattr debacle too...)

Should I have said safe instead of secure? Maybe that would be the better
English word for it.
Like being safe at power failures.

Then there's view security, which should be implemented.

I make my meager living as a small-time administrator and writer of
web (and similar) magick in Python, so I don't know why the xattrs 
couldn't be mapped to Reiser4 calls, but shouldn't it be technically possible?
Maybe that's a point on which to whore out at the prospect of big cash...

Maybe some potential sponsor would agree that the Reiser4 way is the
better way, they'd agree that Linux file systems are starting to suck
compared to, say, Apple's file system and they'd like to do something
about it.

Also asking for a smaller sum of money might be a tactic, "That other company
asked for x money and they got it for their trivial thing, but we're
asking for x/10 to do so much more." But it boils down to presenting
this in a convincing manner...

But these are just ideas, I have absolutely zero marketing experience
so this should not be taken as a presumptuous manual on how to do things :)

-- 
mjt

Re: Fibration questions

[Valdis.Kletnieks]

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On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 12:28:49 +0300, Markus =?UNKNOWN?Q?T=F6rnqvist?= said:

> I think desktops for all the Joe Q. Averages are pretty much a different
> scene from servers..

It's not as different as you might think.  Remember in most corporations that use
Active Directory, all the infrastructure boxes (domain controllers, etc) are Windows
boxes too.  Quite recently, an amazing number of webservers got 0wned because
somebody browsed the net using IE while logged on at the server console....

> >And how many times has the global RAM market been put under severe strain
> >because the latest Windows upgrade needed more RAM, so everybody went out and
> >bought more RAM, and more RAM, and more RAM...
> 
> But Windows isn't the only thing that starts requiring more RAM, and
> if you can buy more for a lesser price, that's what you'll do, regardless.

No, the price of RAM went *UP*, dramatically, because demand was higher
than supply, so you were buying less for a higher price.

The point is that the manufacturers of RAM and systems had *no* incentive
to do anything to stop it.

"Microsoft is expected to recommend that the "average" Longhorn PC feature a
dual-core CPU running at 4 to 6GHz; a minimum of 2 gigs of RAM; up to a
terabyte of storage; a 1 Gbit, built-in, Ethernet-wired port and an 802.11g
wireless link; and a graphics processor that runs three times faster than those
on the market today."

http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,1995,1581842,00.asp

Now *try* to convince me that the Dell and HP saw this, and their first thought
was "Let's see if we can get it to run well on a single-core 3GHz with 1G of RAM" ;)

If that was their first thought, the second was "OK, I'm done laughing, now I need
to pick myself up off the floor...."

> Maybe I'm the unexperienced obnoxious adolescent again, as I'm in only
> my second job so far, but I've noticed that both employers have the
> principle that if you can get anything, even the slightest guarantee,
> that something is faster and more stable at a somewhat higher cost, it's 
> worth it. Even if you'd be paying for a scapegoat-factor warranty.

Right. Which is why you end up *buying* that faster server at higher cost than
you might really need.

Most managers have a *really* hard time dealing with the concept "If you use this
alternative, totally free, no-cost, software, it will run faster and save you money".

> Tune even faster solution and get even more power, it'll last us
> all weekend, before it goes obsolete...

You'd be *amazed* at how many sites *dont* have somebody on the payroll
who can do tuning well.  Usually, it's whatever they remember from the MSCE
exam.  Just because my shop has people experienced in tuning everything from
old ferrite-core systems to top-10 supercomputers doesn't mean every shop does. ;)

> So a Dell 2650 could have could have handled what the 6600 did?

No, the 2650 would certainly have gotten swamped, the two boxes are doing
different things.  The point is that *DELL* didn't have any incentive to get
me to buy a 2650 instead of another 6600.

And if I had little clue, and actually talked to a Dell sales rep, they probably could
have convinced me I needed a 6600.  

> And they're still selling 6600s, how big an impact would Reiser4's speed
> advantage have really on them? But it seems I'm over over my head now :)

Trust me, it wouldn't have helped enough to get the 6600's workload to fit
on a 2650.

> Should I have said safe instead of secure? Maybe that would be the better
> English word for it.
> Like being safe at power failures.

Is it *demonstrably* better than ext3 with 'data=journal'?

> Then there's view security, which should be implemented.

Ahh.. but view security doesn't do you as much good as it could, mostly
because of the "support at the VFS level" issues.

> I make my meager living as a small-time administrator and writer of
> web (and similar) magick in Python, so I don't know why the xattrs 
> couldn't be mapped to Reiser4 calls, but shouldn't it be technically possible?

I'll refrain from saying anything except "read the list archives"....
 
> But these are just ideas, I have absolutely zero marketing experience
> so this should not be taken as a presumptuous manual on how to do things :)

You'd have more luck not talking to the people who sell hardware or systems, but
to the people who *use* hardware and systems, or who sell consulting/maintenance.

For instance, Google has multiple large server farms, each of which has 15K to 20K
systems in it.  They're a Linux shop, and would probably be willing to part with a
fairly large sum of cash if it meant their hardware upgrade costs went down even 5%.

There's lots of places making money doing custom one-off solutions based on
Linux - for instance, most of IBM's Linux revenue comes from consulting/
support. A shop that's doing systems integration might well be willing to pay
$100K for another thing in their bag of tricks that lets them land 20 contracts
that make them $10K profit each, by being able to deliver a solution that uses
$15K less hardware...

The only people willing to pay for something that uses less hardware are people
who are either trying to save money by spending less on hardware, or trying to
make money by selling less of somebody's hardware while charging the same
amount for consulting/development...


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Re: Fibration questions

[David Masover]

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Nikita Danilov wrote:

| Ask Peter Braam (braam@clusterfs.com), whether he has any plans to use
| reiser4 as a back-end.

I've never used Lustre, but I've heard it implements at least some ideas
from InterMezzo, which used other filesystems (supposedly ANY other
filesystem) as a cache.

| This shouldn't be hard to implement, technically.

That's why I want to do it.  I need useful things with my name on them
- -- my grades suck, and next year is Senior year.  Of High school.



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