Subject: Re: softdep?
To: Jim Wise <jwise@unicast.com>
From: Mason Loring Bliss <mason@acheron.middleboro.ma.us>
List: current-users
Date: 03/25/1999 13:40:00
On Thu, Mar 25, 1999 at 12:30:51PM -0500, Jim Wise wrote:

> _The Designn and Implementation of the 4.4BSD Operating System_, by
> McKusick et al has a section describing LFS.  It's not very long, but it
> gives a good overview/introduction.

Hm... Things are busy at work, so I haven't yet looked at the online
references folks have sent, but I do happen to have my copy of the 4.4BSD
book with me. (I'm reading it through straight, and hadn't reached the bit
about LFS yet.)

>From my reading, it actually seems that LFS is *less* stable in some ways
than FFS, not more... My interest in soft updates / JFS is the stability
you see when, for instance, your power is dropping during the middle of a
write. LFS doesn't seem to really be aiming at the same thing as JFS or
soft updates. I don't see it as being something I can point to as being
the right thing for the place at which I'm working at the moment, whereas
soft updates or a journalled filesystem would be a big win.

Anyway, I'd be willing to help test soft update code, whenever it gets
around to where it's in a testable form under NetBSD.

-- 
Mason Loring Bliss             ((  "In the drowsy dark cave of the mind dreams
mason@acheron.middleboro.ma.us  ))  build  their nest  with fragments  dropped
http://acheron.ne.mediaone.net ((   from day's caravan." - Rabindranath Tagore