Messages in this thread |  | | Date | Tue, 15 May 2001 01:06:47 -0700 (PDT) | From | Linus Torvalds <> | Subject | Re: Getting FS access events |
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On Tue, 15 May 2001, Chris Wedgwood wrote: > > On Tue, May 15, 2001 at 12:13:13AM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote: > > We should not create crap code just because we _can_. > > How about removing code?
Absolutely. It's not all that often that we can do it, but when we can, it's the best thing in the world.
> In 2.5.x is we move fs metadata into the pagecache, do we even need a > buffer cache anymore? Can't we just ditch it completely and make all > device access raw?
Yes and no.
Yes, it would be nice.
But no, I doubt we'll move _all_ metadata into the page-cache. I doubt, for example, that we'll find people re-doing all the other filesystems. So even if ext2 was page-cache only, what about all the 35 other filesystems out there in the standard sources, never mind others that haven't been integrated (XFS, ext3 etc..).
Yeah, I know. Some of them already do not use the buffer cache at all (the network filesystems come to mind ;), but even so..
Looks like there are 19 filesystems that use the buffer cache right now:
grep -l bread fs/*/*.c | cut -d/ -f2 | sort -u | wc
So quite a bit of work involved.
But on the whole I'm definitely hoping that yes, we'll relegate the "buffer_head" to be mainly just for IO, and not be a first-class caching entity at all. It's just that I think it will take a _loooong_ time until we actually reach that noble goal completely.
Linus
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