Date: Fri, 26 May 2000 02:58:30 -0400 From: Chuck McCrobie <mccrobi@aplcenMP.apl.jhu.edu> To: freebsd-fs@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Opinion on File System Implementation Message-ID: <392E2096.FED6F59B@apl.jhu.edu>
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I am working on readability of the OpenVMS Files-11 On-Disk Structure 2 file system under FreeBSD. As many of you may know, Files-11 ODS-2 has a "wealth" of record attributes and file organizations to choose from. The actual file data for some of these record types contains record level meta-data. Simply reading the file "blindly" will result in both the "intended" data and the meta-data being returned. I'm wondering if I should just return the "raw" data, including embedded record attributes back during the "read" routine. If so, I would like to provide some mechanism so that user mode programs can get the record attributes and "do the right thing". Is there such a thing as an "ioctl" interface to a file system? If I approach the embedded meta-data in this manner, what would be the best mechanism for returning the record attributes? Perhaps a special file, which when opened and read, will return a fixed structure describing the file/record attributes? It doesn't seem too hard to handle special files inside the operating system. I suspect that the majority of customers (I plan on commericalizing my work) would like to have the file system interpret the record attributes and file organizations. Thus, the user mode programs would see the "intended" data, not the embedded meta-data. Thanks for your time, Chuck McCrobie (** MAD VAX **) mccrobi@apl.jhu.edu To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-fs" in the body of the message
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