Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Large Disks
Message-ID: <1989Oct3.170941.7177@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <233@vsserv.scri.fsu.edu> <3463@ast.cs.vu.nl>
Date: Tue, 3 Oct 89 17:09:41 GMT

In article <3463@ast.cs.vu.nl> ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum) writes:
>An obvious question is how do people convert?  One thought is that you
>first tar your entire file system to diskette in tar format (or PAX or
>whatever...

Other things being equal, the right way to convert is to implement
something like the Eighth Edition filesystem switch in the kernel, so
the kernel simply understands both kinds of filesystem.  This makes
life enormously simpler for everyone except the kernel implementor.

Only a few things should really need to know inode format and block-number
size; they can present a common interface to the rest of the kernel.
Presumably this would be the new interface, with the old one done as a subset.
-- 
Nature is blind; Man is merely |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
shortsighted (and improving).  | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu