Making the file huge will waste lots of space. How about
this userspace solution:
Use the loop-mount way with a filesystem with very low overhead,
similar to romfs. Start with a small file, and extend it
when necessary. The filesystem must of course be designed
in a way that allows extension by simply appending more space.
Extending the file can be handled by a standardized library that
takes care of messy details like umount-extend-remount. This library
might have its own implementation of "fwrite()" so it can be smart
about extending the file.
A low-overhead filesystem could fragment a lot, but this can be helped
by letting the albod-library have a idle-priority thread doing
defragmentation when such files are in use.
We get:
* A compact file useful for ftp, cp, and other transfers.
* Many files in one for albod-aware apps (that use the
appropriate library)
* GUI Filemanagers may do the loop-mount thing when users click
on this kind of file.
Helge Hafting
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/