On Thu, Dec 28, 2000 at 10:50:48AM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> I use ramfs for /tmp on my laptop -- it's very handy because it
> extends the amount of the the disk had spent spun down and therefore
> battery life; but writing large files into /tmp can blow away the
> system or at the very least eat away at otherwise usable ram. Not
> terribly desirable.
Jeff Garzik had the code to do this, and the new shared memory code should
be able to be massaged to handle this all without actually bloating the
kernel (ie "ramfs" would still stay very very tiny, just taking advantage
of the common code that the VM layer already has to support for other
things).
I would prefer we leave ramfs alone as is -- it makes an excellent
starting point for a new fs and is fairly simple to grok. If we are
to add any more complexity here like the size limiting patches or the
use of a backing store, I'd like to have this as a new filesystem,
something like 'vmfs' or some such.
ramfs is small simple and elegant; for mere mortals like me it
contains enough to help understand what is required of a filesystem
without obscuring this fact. I'd hate to see that change.
Jeff (or indeed anyone); if you have the patch Linus is talking about
somewhere (even and old one) could you sen it my way please (off the
list).
--cw
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