Re: AZFS file system proposal

[JÃrn Engel]

On Tue, 17 June 2008 11:35:10 +0200, Jan Engelhardt wrote:
> On Tuesday 2008-06-17 11:06, Maxim Shchetynin wrote:
> 
> >I would say you can either mmap it or place a file system on it.
> 
> The help text implies that I *need* azfs to mmap it - and that sounds
> like a Rube Goldberg machine.

Some people actually prefer filesystems over raw devices for a variety
of reasons:
- each file brings its own address space, which offers memory protection
  from other processes,
- files can have owners and permission bits,
- files hide the fragmentation of the underlying device from users,
- a file system provides a common and well-understood api for devices
  with less common or well-understood apis,
- etc.

Those reasons are as valid for azfs as for any other filesystem.  I have
no doubt that azfs is useful.  It probably wouldn't hurt to express the
merits of the filesystem and the problems it is supposed to solve a
little better.  So far most criticism was based on the fact that noone
understood what the hell it was all about.

My personal question when looking at this is: Why not use ext2?  It
appears to me that an ext2 mounted with '-o xip' would solve the same
problems.

JÃrn

-- 
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are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic
and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.
-- Theodore Roosevelt, Kansas City Star, 1918
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