From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-ID: <416E9B72.9030400@9fs.org>
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2004 16:29:54 +0100
From: Nigel Roles <nigel@9fs.org>
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To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@cse.psu.edu>
Subject: Re: [9fans] some shell scripts
References: <2c09e36b136393b4df31b8b14a3c2f27@collyer.net>
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geoff@collyer.net wrote:

>I think performance could be acceptable: I run lnfs over both file
>systems (main and other) on my old ken file server and it doesn't seem
>to slow things noticeably, and this should be similar: the file server
>would just pass requests through, taking note of creations and
>removals and updating its database.  It sounds pretty straightforward
>actually.
>
>  
>
I think you're right about the load implied by lnfs. You only need to 
check the
.longnames file when opening or closing a file. This works with the lnfs 
running
on the workstation and is therefore kenfs comaptible.

Surely for watching files, you want to know if other clients connected 
to the fileserver
have changed things? Wouldn't this require a client to update a database 
on every change
in case another client is interested in the changes it has made to a 
particular
file?

This doesn't sound too different from simply statting every file you are 
interested
in every second, which Martin reasonably suggested might be a little 
heavyweight
when trying to build indexes for a large proportion of files on a file 
system.

The bright new shiny inotify device in Linux (note it's a device so 
accessibility over a
network might be a problem) sources events when inodes are updated and copes
with dismounts, which is attractive with so many hot-pluggable-widgets these
days. Within the system-centric Unix world, this is relatively tidy 
compared to
SIGIO.

Seems like it might need some kenfs/fossil hacks for the Plan 9 world.