Re: CDROM jukebox filesystem using autofs

James Mastros (root@jennifer-unix.dyn.ml.org)
Sat, 2 May 1998 13:35:53 -0400 (EDT)

On Sat, 2 May 1998, Riley Williams wrote:
RW> A variant of that might make more sense here - perhaps have the
RW> /dev/jukebox (or whatever) as the device number for the entire jukebox
RW> array, similar to the RAID devices. One could then have that as a
RW> pseudo-directory that has a separate [directory] entry for each
RW> available CD similar to the virtual /proc file system's method of
RW> 'storing' files...
RW>
RW> This would mean that a system with two 3-changer drives would appear
RW> something like the following listing:
RW>
[...]
RW> The letter would be used internally to identify which drive, and the
RW> number that followed would say which disc from that drive...one could
RW> easily support MILLIONS of disks that way...
RW>
RW> Best wishes from Riley.

Hmm... This, I assume, is nearly what the original idea was -- only without
the letter -- the whole point is that we want to be independent of what
drive holds what CD, so we can optmise use of the drives (IE each drive can
hold any CD that you have, so if we have 10 drives, the users can use any 10
of the 1,000 avaible CDs).

However, this dosn't take into account my problem at all -- that being that
this dosn't allow you to do IO (I, rather, these are CD-_RO_Ms) on the raw
disk -- only to mount it. Instead, how about making the jukeboxfs layout be
either of n files (where n=the number of avaible CDs), with names of 1 to n
(well, 1 to n, followed by a letter from 'a' to 'q' indicating the
partition), which you could mount with loopback. Or, you could have a set
of files like the ones in the last sugestion, only precided by 'D' (for
device), and internaly "mount" them into directories with the same name,
only with D replaced by F (filesystem).

-=- James Mastros

-- 
True mastery is knowing enough to bullshit the rest.
	-=- Me




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