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Date:      Sun, 4 Feb 1996 23:18:18 +0100 (MET)
From:      Luigi Rizzo <luigi@labinfo.iet.unipi.it>
To:        j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch)
Cc:        freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: FAT filesystem performance
Message-ID:  <199602042218.XAA19281@labinfo.iet.unipi.it>
In-Reply-To: <199602041822.TAA01613@uriah.heep.sax.de> from "J Wunsch" at Feb 4, 96 07:21:54 pm

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> As Luigi Rizzo wrote:
> 
> > I am wondering: how hard would it be to add mmap() to, say, wd.c ?
> > Would it have other useful applications ?
> 
> This would only shift the problem from the msdosfs code into the
> various device drivers.

Well, let me first say that I don't know exactly how mmapping files
works internally. But what I expect is to have the kernel do its
best to keep blocks in core and write them back (if necessary) when
the file is unmapped.

Now assume for a moment the existence of a Very Simple File System
(VSFS), which always contains a single file spanning the whole
partition. mmapping the unique file of this VSFS should do exactly
what I want, and the VSFS is device independant (it's a file
system!).

This VSFS is logically above the device driver, but it might just
be a standard piece of the system which all device drivers invoke
to implement mmap().

Does the above sound reasonable ?

I have no idea on how complex would it be to implement this, but
the feeling is that it is more of a design problem rather than a
coding problem (for those who know how to write such code, of course
:))

	Luigi
====================================================================
Luigi Rizzo                     Dip. di Ingegneria dell'Informazione
email: luigi@iet.unipi.it       Universita' di Pisa
tel: +39-50-568533              via Diotisalvi 2, 56126 PISA (Italy)
fax: +39-50-568522              http://www.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/
====================================================================



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