I think this file system is designed for data warehousing, and not for general file storage. The unfortunate term here is log-structured. I think they mean this in a database log sense and not in a journaling sense. Also note the term lossless. This only makes sense if they mean that they never delete any data.
-----Original Message----- From: Linux on 390 Port [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Adam Thornton Sent: Tuesday, October 04, 2005 9:46 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: www.nilfs.org On Oct 4, 2005, at 2:30 AM, Waite, Dick wrote: > An interesting item from NTT > > www.nilfs.org > > NILFS is a log-structured file system developed for the Linux kernel > 2.6. NILFS is an abbreviation of the New Implementation of a > Log-structured File System. A log-structured file system has the > characteristic that all file system data including metadata is written > in a log-like format. Data is never overwritten, only appended in this > file system. This greatly improves performance because there is little > overhead regarding disk seeks. Um, doesn't that chew up your DASD really fast if it never overwrites anything? Also, I suspect that the smartness in seeking is largely lost on s390/ zSeries hardware anyway, since the disk geometry is so far from what Linux ever actually sees. All the intermediate controllers and abstraction layers will work to defeat it. The free point-in-time snapshots are pretty cool though. Adam ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
