Re: Buffering / caching of filesystem

Mathew G Monroe (mmex+@andrew.cmu.edu)
Wed, 31 Mar 1999 13:05:13 -0500 (EST)

Excerpts from internet.computing.linux-kernel: 31-Mar-99 Buffering /
caching of file.. by dstein2203@t-online.de
> I remember that there was a question for going around the buffer/cache
of filesy
> stem in linux a few days ago - I shared the discussion.
> Advice was given to use raw-devices to have a constant datastream
without buffer
> ing/caching - is there any possibility to decrease the cache or to
switch it off
> without using raw-devices?
> I am running kernel 2.0.36 and was told that there is no possibility
of using ra
> w-devices so far except on kernelversions above 2.1.131.
>

Weel I have something like that. I put together a very simple rawfs
type about a month ago to do some testing on. It basically lets you
mount a raw device as a file. Reads are cached, yet writes are flsuhed
immediately to disk.

If people find this interesting it can be found at
ftp://box.res.cmu.edu/pub/rawfs-1.0.tgz

If people actually find this useful I could spend a couple more hours
and add a whole list of features. As a note this was designed as a
kernel module, so it should work with any kernels, including 2.0.x, but
I have only tried it on 2.1.x and 2.2.x kernels.

Thanks,
Mathew Monroe

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