Messages in this thread | | | Date | Mon, 1 Apr 1996 21:58:01 +0200 (MET DST) | From | Michel LESPINASSE <> | Subject | Re: announce: ext2 compression patch |
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Just my two cents about this file system question....
When I was still using msdos, some years ago, I occasionnaly used a freeware disk compressor, named JAM. It had a really cool feature : it had several packing algorithms, so most of the time I used the FAST one, that allowed me to accelerate my hard disk access times, and then when I wanted to take a coffee-break, I launched a disk optimizer, that repacked all the recent data with a better packing algorithm - this was quite fast, because it only tried to repack the recent data that was still using the fast algorithm.
I think this could be a great feature for those who run linux on low-power computers. perhaps the repack phase could be lauched in the night with a crontab program, or by a daemon when the load is low.
"Encrypting the filesystem" is not a real issue for me - if the compressed filesystem packs only a few disk sectors at a time. this way, if a disk sector gets destroyed, the damage won't be much higher that at the present time - for example if a directory is destructed, only the few more entryes that fitted in this sector because of compression would be destroyed.
The next step could even be to use part of the data space gained with compression, to fit a few percents of redundary error correction data - in order to recover in case of a disk failure.
Just my two cents - too bad that I don't code better ;-)
Michel "Walken" LESPINASSE - Student at Ecole Centrale Paris (France) www PC demo coder & official LiGNUx support (o o) Email : walken@via.ecp.fr ------oOO--(_)--OOo--------------------------------------------------
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