Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!bcm!convex!news From: tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen) Newsgroups: comp.unix.internals Subject: Re: Ideas for changes to Unix filesystem Message-ID: <1991Feb05.173309.128@convex.com> Date: 5 Feb 91 17:33:09 GMT References: <414@appserv.Eng.Sun.COM> Sender: news@convex.com (news access account) Reply-To: tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen) Organization: CONVEX Software Development, Richardson, TX Lines: 25 Nntp-Posting-Host: pixel.convex.com From the keyboard of igb@fulcrum.bt.co.uk (Ian G Batten): :In article bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) writes: :> Think of fixed length record files and inserting into them, it would :> be nice to be able to just copy/munge the block numbers rather than :> the data. : :What's needed is a version of streams for filesystems. With Multics, :the One True Operating System, you could attach modules (== push :modules) such as vfile_ to provide additional functionality over and :above that which you got from initiate_segment_ and its friends. What :would be nice with Unix would be ISAM, record mode, whatever modules you :could push on top of the mmap interface. Once you can map files into :your address space most things can be done on top of that. I think a good watchdog (file/inode daemon) implementation would allow that. See the paper is the proceedings from the next-to-the-last USENIX in Dallas (about 3 years ago) for a description of the idea and one implementation. --tom -- "Still waiting to read alt.fan.dan-bernstein using DBWM, Dan's own AI window manager, which argues with you 10 weeks before resizing your window." ### And now for the question of the month: How do you spell relief? Answer: U=brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu; echo "/From: $U/h:j" >>~/News/KILL; expire -f $U