Re: large file support? (fwd)
Martin von Loewis (martin@mira.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de)
Wed, 20 Aug 1997 10:14:14 +0200
> Yep, but 64 bit inode number support needs adequate concepts to
> manage this number of files.
>
> Can you imagine the ext2 data structures with a 64 bit number
> of files? How long would it take to find a free inode with a
> linear search in a 64 bit bitmap? How much RAM do you need to
> hold that many block group descriptors resident?
Hmm. Nobody suggested that ext2 or any other particular file system
should support 2**64 inodes.
The question is whether the VFS interface should be widened to use
64 bits to represent an inode number. This only takes about four
extra bytes of RAM (per inode).
There might be various uses for this feature; some uses would
involve sparse inode numbers.
Regards,
Martin