Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!prcrs!paul
From: paul@prcrs.UUCP (Paul Hite)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: What kind of things would you want in the GNU OS
Message-ID: <108@prcrs.UUCP>
Date: 14 Jun 89 15:10:37 GMT
References: <19981@adm.BRL.MIL> <8187@boring.cwi.nl>
Organization: PRC Realty Systems, McLean, VA
Lines: 39

In article <8187@boring.cwi.nl>, jack@cwi.nl (Jack Jansen) writes:
> In article <19981@adm.BRL.MIL> rbj@dsys.ncsl.nist.gov (Root Boy Jim) writes:
> >
> >I seem to remember something about a UNIX port to a big machine (Cray?
> >370?) that used 4k bytes/inode. Guess where small files were stored?
> >
> I would be interested if anyone could provide more details.....

I believe that I know the paper that Root Boy Jim remembers.  But I'll
bet that he confused a couple of things.

I found the paper in the AT&T Bell Labs Technical Journal Oct 1984
Vol. 63 No.8 Part 2.  (This is one of the 2 all-unix issues.  These two
issues have been reprinted and are available now as "Unix Readings" or
something.)

The paper is titled "A UNIX System Implementation for System/370"  by
W. A. Felton, G. L. Miller and J. M. Milner.  And, Jack, the paper is
dated Jan 9, 1984.

A couple of quotes:

	UNIX file systems on System/370 are in format identical to 
	standard UNIX file systems, except that the block size has
	been enlarged to 4096 bytes.

But later:

	Files of less than 493 bytes are stored directly in the
	corresponding inode.

The paper doesn't get more explicit than that about inode size.  I believe
that they were just using large blocks with regular sized inodes.  They 
put small files in the inodes because they were afraid of wasting space
with big blocks.  They didn't have any "fragment" concept.  They actually
call the fast access a "side effect".

Paul Hite   PRC Realty Systems  McLean,Va   uunet!prcrs!paul    (703) 556-2243
                      DOS is a four letter word!