From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Mark Hills Subject: SSD cache with regular partition, like BSD swapcache Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2013 22:11:10 +0100 (BST) Message-ID: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Return-path: Sender: linux-bcache-owner-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org To: linux-bcache-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org List-Id: linux-bcache@vger.kernel.org For some time I've been hoping to use SSD caching, but cannot reasonably accomodate the superblock and new partition format. Hence, looking for a non-writeback SSD cache which can be transparently added and removed from the system. Of course it's at the expense of losing the cache content each time the cache is attached -- but for many useful cases and workloads this is absolutely ok, eg. workstations (using suspend-RAM) or full-time servers. Doesn't look like it's possible from the docs; has there been any work on this -- a different 'glue' or front end? IIRC the first public announcement of bcache did something similar -- hooked into the system by re-routing the I/O requests to a specific disk. Tho I did not test it, it looks like DragonFly BSD has what I'm looking for, as part of its "swapcache" feature -- looks very easy to set up: http://www.dragonflybsd.org/docs/howtos/swapcache/ Thanks -- Mark