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SubjectRe: FS idea
Theodore Y. Ts'o wrote:
>
> Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1998 21:09:53 -0400
> From: David Feuer <feuer@his.com>
>
> Please no flames. This is probably ridiculus, but I like it.
>
> I think it would be nice to add in a kernel feature to allow the kernel
> to interface with userspace programs to provide fs support for certain
> filesystems. There are three kinds of filesystems that (in my opinion)
> this would be really nice for.
>
> No, no, this isn't rediculous. There was a userfs early in the Linux
> kernel history, but it wasn't quite stable and was never finished.
>
> The kind of hook I'm looking for would probably fit best in the loopback
> driver, in my opinion.
>
*> It wouldn't work there because the loopback driver is a block device,
*> and this needs to be done at the next layer higher in the abstraction
*> layer --- at the VFS layer.
>
> It's not *that* hard to do, but it would have some performance
> limitations (which might not matter, in some cases).
>
> - Ted

I realized that (***) soon after I sent the message. Unfortunately, I
don't have the time or knowledge to offer to maintain userfs. It would
be nice if someone did though. On the other hand...... It's not a bad
idea (IMO) to put a hook in the loopback anyway. At the moment, the
loopback driver supports certain kinds of encryption (limited) on the
loopback device. If I had a userspace hook into it, I could put in a
compression system, more kinds of encryption, and other stuff like
that. e.g. user says read(), loopback says read() compression system
(custom designed) goes to proper block, decompresses, and returns. Or
other way round. Or something like that (don't know much of fs
compressors). 'twould be useful.

--
______________________________
/ David Feuer \
| dfeuer@binx.mbhs.edu |
| feuer@his.com |
| daf@cygnus.usno.navy.mil |
| david@feuer.his.com |
\ 301-320-4990 /
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