Re: The argument for fs assistance in handling archives (was: silent semantic changes with reiser4)

Linus Torvalds
2004-09-02T18:03:52Z

On Thu, 2 Sep 2004, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
>
> http://oss.oracle.com/projects/userfs/ has code that clues gnomevfs onto
> a kernel filesystem. The code is horrible, but it shows that it can
> be done.

I do like the setup where the extended features are done as a "view" on
top of some other filesystem, so that you can choose to _either_ access
the raw (and supposedly stable, simply by virtue of simplicity) or the
"fancy" interface. Without having to reformat the disk to a filesystem you
don't trust, or you have other reasons you can't use (disk sharing with
other systems, whatever).

It doesn't have to be "user", btw, in the sense that a lot of the normal
code could be in kernel mode. Same way as Tux handling all the regular
static requests entirely in kernel mode, but having the ability for
calling down to apache..

Linus