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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!usc!math.ohio-state.edu!darwin.sura.net!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!usenet From: niemidc@oasis.gtefsd.com (David C. Niemi) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.development Subject: Re: Compressing file system ? Date: 9 Aug 1993 15:01:13 GMT Organization: GTE Federal Systems Division Lines: 19 Distribution: world Message-ID: <245orp$e2f@europa.eng.gtefsd.com> References: <vp.744825872@news.forth.gr> Reply-To: niemidc@oasis.gtefsd.com NNTP-Posting-Host: hengist.lab.oasis.gtegsc.com In article 744825872@news.forth.gr, vp@nemesis.csi.forth.gr (Vassilis Prevelakis) writes: [...] >So how do we deal with block level access? > The idea that comes to my mind is that you break the file into >blocks and compress each block individually. I would suppose that >you'd lose some efficiency in the compression (esp. if you have to >copy your compression table in the beginning of each block). Maybe >having larger blocks would reduce the overheads. That is what I suggested (not an original idea by me either, I suspect). I don't see why such a feature would cause much kernel bloat, as some have suggested, provided it is kept optional. And performance is less critical than it would be on a normal filesystem, as you would normally want to use uncompressed file systems for performance-critical files. --- David C. Niemi: David.Niemi@oasis.gtegsc.com