I am currently conducting a thorough study of the VFS subsystem
in preparation for an all-out effort to port SGI's XFS filesystem to
FreeBSD 4.x at such time as SGI gives up the code. Matt Dillon
has written in hackers- that the VFS subsystem is presently not
well understood by any of the active kernel code contributers and
that it will be rewritten later this year. This is obviously of great
concern to me in this port. I greatly appreciate all assistance in
answering the following questions:
1) What are the perceived problems with the current VFS?
2) What options are available to us as remedies?
3) To what extent will existing FS code require revision in order
to be useful after the rewrite?
4) Will Chapters 6,7,8 & 9 of "The Design and Implementation of
the 4.4BSD Operating System" still pertain after the rewrite?
5) How important are questions 3 & 4 in the design of the new
VFS?
I believe that the VFS is conceptually sound and that the existing
semantics should be strictly retained in the new code. Any new
functionality should be added in the form of entirely new kernel
routines and system calls, or possibly by such means as
converting the existing routines to the vararg format &etc.
Does anyone know when SGI will release XFS?
Matthew Alton
Computer Services - UNIX Systems Administration
(314)632-6644 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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