On Wed, 30 Jun 1999 23:52:51 -0600, "Peter J. Braam" <braam@cs.cmu.edu>
said:
> Hi,
> I'm thinking about how a _network_ file system might use a bdflush like
> functionality to flush dirty file and directory data buffers back to the
> server.
We already have per-inode page lists threading the page cache: can't we
use that?
> The problem is that I don't know how to do flush dirty inode pages with the
> current bdflush facility. The client doesn't really see a block device,
> and is aware of tuples (server, device, ino, logical block) and not (server,
> device, physical block). Such buffers don't fit too well in the buffer
> cache.
Exactly: that's the point. For networked fses, the page cache is the
only thing that matters: the buffer cache is *designed* to be tightly
integrated with the block device layers.
> A) introduce "sync_inode_pages" into the sync_dev function.
Sure, that makes a great deal of sense.
> B) change the buffer heads
Stick with the page cache for networked filesystems.
--Stephen
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