Re: Multiplexing filesystem

[James Davies]

What about implimenting something like KDE's IOSlaves at kernel level? you 
could then create a symlink to any recognized URL. This would also have 
plenty of other uses. 

On Tue, 27 Nov 2001 13:59, Mark Richards wrote:
> Quick question, which I suspect has a long answer.
>
> I would like to write a multiplexing filesystem.  The idea is as follows:
>
> The filesystem would ideally wrap another filesystem, such as nfs or smbfs
> or ext2.  Most operations would just be passed to the native fs call. 
> However, for some files, selectable at run time by some control singal,
> would actually reside on another file system.  The other filesystem would
> have to be mounted.
>
> The idea is for a version controlling filesystem.  The server would be a
> network server (hence the desire to wrap nfs) which presents a 'view' of
> the source code.  When the user reserves a file for editing, the file is
> copied to the local disk.  From that point on, the local file is referred
> to until the user commits the change or unreserves the file.  Ideally, the
> local copy of the file could be on any file system, not one that is
> necessarily local.  And this has to be totally transparent to the user,
> except for the step where the user 'reserves' the file.
>
> I've thought about two ways to do this.  One is to wrap the 'versioning'
> file system with a multiplexor that checks fs calls to see if they are
> referring to a file that is on a different fs.  The other approach is to
> intercept calls to the VFS to do the same trick.
>
> I'm new to the whole filesystem-coding thing, so bear with me if what i've
> just said makes no sense.  So, my question (I guess it wasn't quick after
> all) is: Can it be done, and are either of my two approaches feasible?  Any
> suggestions or tips?
>
> Thanks,
> Mark Richards
>
> PS please CC me if possible.
>
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