From owner-freebsd-hackers  Mon Feb  5 13:41:26 1996
Return-Path: owner-hackers
Received: (from root@localhost)
          by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id NAA27761
          for hackers-outgoing; Mon, 5 Feb 1996 13:41:26 -0800 (PST)
Received: from eac.iafrica.com (slipper101152.iafrica.com [196.7.101.152])
          by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id NAA27728
          for <hackers@freebsd.org>; Mon, 5 Feb 1996 13:41:15 -0800 (PST)
Received: (from rnordier@localhost) by eac.iafrica.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) id XAA00613; Mon, 5 Feb 1996 23:37:02 +0200
From: Robert Nordier <rnordier@iafrica.com>
Message-Id: <199602052137.XAA00613@eac.iafrica.com>
Subject: Re: Some thoughts on FAT filesystems
To: luigi@labinfo.iet.unipi.it (Luigi Rizzo)
Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 23:37:01 +0200 (SAT)
Cc: hackers@freebsd.org
In-Reply-To: <199602051948.UAA21768@labinfo.iet.unipi.it> from "Luigi Rizzo" at Feb 5, 96 08:48:16 pm
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24 ME8a]
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org
Precedence: bulk

On Mon, 5 Feb 1996, Luigi Rizzo wrote:
  
> > of sync, anytime anyone does anything in DOS.  It needs setting up;
> > and it's just too _exposed_.  Because it's non-standard, users will
> > complain bitterly when it bombs out;  because it is visible, it'll
> > be an endless minor source of controversy....
> 
> Sorry but it is completely standard.

Well, perhaps I should have said "`non-standard'": meaning non-standard to
DOS users, as a way of dealing with the DOS FS.

> Yes, you are organizing data on the disk in a smarter way,
> but that's completely compatible with standard FAT.
> Only at runtime under FreeBSD you
> have additional live structures that are only helpful if your system
> crashes. And when your system crashes in the middle of a disk write, do
> you complain because you have to use a non-standard utility to recover
> your data instead of loosing them ?

Oh, they're _transient_ structures?  I understood them to be fixed.

> 
> And about visibility: anything you install to improve performance
> becomes visible, either in the form of a file containing a device
> driver, a few lines in CONFIG.SYS (or a few hundreds of line in
> SYSTEM.INI...) etc.
> 
> And, in the end, should we really care about all this ?
> 
> > If people really want the extra performance, I'd suggest the option of
> > doing as Windows NT does and writing the FAT asynchronously.  At least
> > people are used to that, or used to the partial equivalent of running
> > smartdrv without a write-through cache.  And at least that would be a
> > Microsoft-approved mess. :-)
> 
> but we don't have this under FreeBSD.
>

I'm certainly not knocking the thought that went into this....

However, doing like NT will be _much_ easier, a bit quicker, and it will
implement a way of living dangerously that DOS users completely understand
(maybe even expect).  So they've got a safe mode and a fast mode.  Surely
that's enough?

-- 
Robert Nordier