Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!turnkey!orchard.la.locus.com!fafnir.la.locus.com!fafnir.la.locus.com!richard From: richard@locus.com (Richard M. Mathews) Newsgroups: news.software.nntp Subject: Re: Compressing the news spool Message-ID: Date: 3 Jan 91 01:17:51 GMT References: Organization: Locus Computing Corporation, Los Angeles, California Lines: 27 nelson@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Russ Nelson) writes: >Here's a suggestion for someone with time on their hands: Here's another way to compress a news file system. It doesn't require nntp (in fact, you should still be able to 'cd' to the news spool directory and look around without noticing anything out of the ordinary). It does require a kernel with a file system switch. Create a new file system type. The file system code would automatically compress files as they are written and uncompress as they are read. You can design a compression algorithm which is specially tailored to the typical contents of news articles. The block size of the file system would be suitably small for typical compressed news articles, or you could invent an allocation scheme that does not depend on blocking. Since most files are opened, written, and closed in quick succession, you shouldn't need to worry about the efficiency of arbitrary seeks, holes in files, etc. (I'm assuming that the $LIB directory is separate.) You could even compress the directories by taking advantage of the fact that most file names are small, consecutive numbers. This file system could work with B News or C News. 1/2 :-) Richard M. Mathews Freedom for Lithuania richard@locus.com Laisve! lcc!richard@seas.ucla.edu ...!{uunet|ucla-se|turnkey}!lcc!richard