Arnd Bergmann wrote:
On Saturday 31 May 2008, David Newall wrote:
I don't agree that it is nicer to do this in cramfs. I prefer the
technique of union of a tmpfs over some other fs because a single
solution that works with all filesystems is better than re-implementing
the same idea in multiple filesystems. Multiple implementations is a
recipe for bugs and feature mismatch.
You're right in principle, but unfortunately there is to date no working
implementation of union mounts. Giving users the option of using an
existing file system with a few tweaks can only be better than than
forcing them to use hacks like unionfs.
I tend to agree with Arnd Bergmann. While I prefer the aesthetic
cleanliness of stackable filesystems, the lack of proper stacking
support in the Linux VFS makes other techniques necessary. Unionfs is
complex and for many embedded systems with constrained resources Unionfs
adds a lot of extra overhead.
If I read the patches correctly, when a file page is written to, only
that page gets copied into the page cache and locked, the other pages
continue to be read off disk from cramfs? With Unionfs a page write
causes the entire file to be copied up to the r/w tmpfs and locked into
the page cache causing unnecessary RAM overhead.
Phillip
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