Re: [patch 12/16] fix race between writeback and unlink

Benjamin LaHaise
2002-06-04T22:04:17Z

On Tue, Jun 04, 2002 at 02:37:26PM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> That's a good start, but before even egtting that far there is some need
> for a way to get a picture of the FS layout in a reasonably fs-independent
> way.

Al Viro actually came up with a beautiful mechanism for it: present
the filesystem's metadata as a filesystem itself. Blocks within a
particular inode can then be viewed with cat, and suggested replacements
can be made via echo. Such a best could be called ext2metafs and work
cooperatively with the existing filesystem code. It's quite an elegant
design that has utility beyond the simple case of defragmenting.

> Add a nice graphical front-end, and you can make it a useful screen-saver.

Heh, that would be excellent.

-ben
--
"You will be reincarnated as a toad; and you will be much happier."