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Date:      Sat, 22 Jan 2000 14:08:59 -0500
From:      Chuck McCrobie <mccrobi@aplcenMP.apl.jhu.edu>
To:        fs@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: UDF, userfs
Message-ID:  <388A004B.12203610@apl.jhu.edu>
References:  <200001220157.SAA25999@usr09.primenet.com>

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There are some file systems in the commerical world that "uplink" to
a user mode daemon that does the actual on-disk work.  Without naming
names, I can think of at least two that actually do this...

They present a pseudo-device which the end-user mounts.  This
pseudo-device catches all the file system requests and "up calls" the
user mode daemon.  The user mode daemon than talks to the real device to
perform the i/o.  I may be able to provide details of the process from
another Unix system, but not actual code.

This approach seems to handle many o/s'es in that the daemon can be made
somewhat portable.  The pseudo-device, however, is of necessity o/s
specific.

One may send flames this way, but I'm also wondering about doing this
for NT also.  A pseudo-device to catch the file system IRP's, up call
some "NT Service" which actually does the on-disk managment and I/O to
the real device.

Please note that I'm not interested in placing more than one slice on
a disk.  My background is optical where, typically, one file system
slice is laid down on the entire surface.

I'm wondering about the actual performance of such a file system.  The
user mode daemon would have to compete for disk/page with other user
mode programs.  Perhaps this is not too bad.

Chuck McCrobie (** MAD VAX **)


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