Re: versioning filesystems and linux

Bart Lauwers (blauwers@cisco.com)
Wed, 20 Aug 1997 11:35:18 +1000


> > I suspect this is largely a userspace issue.... 'xcept that access to
> > filesystem would need to pass through userspace [can this be done?]
>
> Versioning is a file system issue, the VFS doesn't care about it, and on
> the whole I think it'll do the right thing (there is a 2.1.x dcache aliasing
> problem like upper/lower casing). One approach thats quite elegant is not
> versioning but snapshots as done by the NetApp WAFS. You can look in
> .1 .2 .3 .4 ... of any directory to fish out files 10,20,30,40 minutes ago
>
> It uses a copy on write versioning scheme

Agreed, the snapshot scheme used by NetApp is a nice thing to have if you're
looking for a similar feat. For more info on how NetApp did it you can always
check this URL: http://www.netapp.com/technology/level3/3002.html