Re: The argument for fs assistance in handling archives

Linh Dang
2004-09-03T01:12:44Z

Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org> wrote:

>
>
> 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'd be something similar to what clearcase does (not that I like
clearcase, I hate it with a passion for other reasons!)

On such a system, one would have multiple virtual views mounted (by
root) under:

/view/tar, /view/dpkg, /view/rpm, etc.

for every regular file /home/joe/blah.tar

the path /view/tar/home/joe/blah.tar/ is a directory where member of
the archives directly accessible.

old tools continue work as is. new tools can take a look on virtual
views for virtual access.

Not sure how such a system would work with the dentry cache.

--
Linh Dang