"H. Peter Anvin" wrote:
>
> "Christopher W. Curtis" wrote:
> >
> > The three things that DOS does that makes it easy for users is:
> > 1) Auto-mount the floppy upon request
> > 2) Write synchronously to the floppy
> > 3) Auto-unmount upon ejection
> >
>
> In short, you want supermount.
Do you have a URL for this? I've tried supermount.cornpops.cx but it
doesn't resolve, and patches seem to be disappearing off the net ... :-\
> > Condition 3 needs a VFS hook, I believe. Yes, autofs will auto unmount
> > after a specific amount of time, but after ejecting the floppy, I can
> > still do a 'ls'. The buffer cache should be cleared when it is ejected,
> > and I believe the VFS gets this signal. It does when a CD-ROM is
> > inserted/ejected for sure. Even if I replace the floppy with another,
> > this cache remains intact, which is then just wrong.
> >
> > Do these changes seem reasonable, and if a VFS change is required,
> > possible before the release of kernel 2.4?
> >
>
> Not a chance in hell. Putting it in the VFS would slow down *every
> access*, even to non-removable devices.
I'm no expert, but are you sure about this? The VFS reports "disk
changed" into syslog - this would be as good a time as ever to flush the
buffer cache for that device, would it not?
If supermount does all this then there's no need to hack up autofs, but
this doesn't seem like a major burden - when the VFS reports a disk
change to syslog, make a similar report to automount (course, don't make
it hardcoded like syslog, but the idea should be sound, no?) It
definately could [should] clear the buffer cache for the device, imo.
Christopher
