Re: [9fans] Multi-dimensional filesystem

[tlaronde@polynum.com]

On Fri, Aug 03, 2012 at 11:58:08AM -0700, Skip Tavakkolian wrote:
> if i understand correctly, this is one way it could be done (i think):
>
> * built a graph representing the structure
> * create a file server that given a graph and a root node, synthesizes
> a hierarchy,  AND
> * on every walk to a node launches a copy of itself with the same
> graph but the new node as the root AND
> * mounts the newly launched copy of it self under that node (like exportfs).

Interesting. I guess the "children"/"parents" problem could be tricked by this
translation (changing the origin on each node, and in fact presenting
"parents" as one subdirs tree [reverse hierarchy] and the real "children"
classically the other part (the negative could be precisely parents)).
But in this case the equivalent of "cd .." on root would indeed goes in
a subdir, unless root is absolute root...

What is typical is that n 9P, walk takes whether a subdir or the
previous, that is the ".." is really a local variable meaning
"whatever was before" and not something hard encoded in the current
file.

The problem of implementing something efficient for the storage
(not serving it) is another matter.

The "lack" of links (whether hard or symbolic) on Plan9 could seem
to suppress some facilities. But since this does not give all, even not
a lot (this does not address multidimensional), it happens that it
could be easier to implement something like this in a Plan9 world...

Thanks!
--
        Thierry Laronde <tlaronde +AT+ polynum +dot+ com>
                      http://www.kergis.com/
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