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Creating Linux virtual filesystemsCreating Linux virtual filesystemsPosted Oct 23, 2002 16:50 UTC (Wed) by airwin (guest, #6920)Parent article: Creating Linux virtual filesystems
Actually, I didn't like this article as much as the other posters here. To my mind the balance between introductory material (which most LWN readers can understand) and technical details (which most LWN readers cannot understand) is off. Here are my two suggestions: (1) I suggest you should have included the same technical details, but hide them in the link to your overall source code for the small subset of your readers who are interested. After all, the main point here is that libfs creates a boilerplate way of creating your own special file system; the details of the boilerplate are not that interesting until the day you actually want to create your own filesystem. (2) Please expand the introductory and concluding material. The introduction gives the impression that we might end up with hundreds of special file systems in the near future, and I believe that would be an even worse mess than the current /proc. Your conclusion then does give a tantalizing indication that there are other ways to export information than a special file system, but this needs expansion.
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Creating Linux virtual filesystems Posted Oct 23, 2002 18:38 UTC (Wed) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] Sorry you didn't like it...it was meant to be a far more technical piece than usually appears on the Kernel Page. The technical level of that page isn't changing, but I think it's worth putting in some more hardcore stuff occasionally.
"The introduction gives the impression that we might end up with hundreds of special file systems in the near future, and I believe that would be an even worse mess than the current /proc. " That is a definite risk; the Linux system of the future could well have management issues that we don't see now.
"Your conclusion then does give a tantalizing indication that there are other ways to export information than a special file system, but this needs expansion." The device model was covered in some detail back in August.
Creating Linux virtual filesystems Posted Oct 23, 2002 19:40 UTC (Wed) by airwin (guest, #6920) [Link] Thanks for that additional link.
Creating Linux virtual filesystems Posted Oct 24, 2002 7:42 UTC (Thu) by ekj (guest, #1524) [Link] Well a filesystem that lives in its own module doesn't bother anyone who doesn't load it. "lwnfs" now exists. It bothers noone. Those who want their linux-box to be able to count in kernel-mode can insmod it, the rest of us can go on our merry way.:-)
Split the difference Posted Oct 24, 2002 22:40 UTC (Thu) by esnyder (guest, #6987) [Link] I don't know; I liked the extra technical information, and would not really change the amount of code inline in the article. However, I did find myself wishing for a conclusion that offered some details on the kinds of (non-trivial) things that one might implement as virtual filesystems. While the counter-per-file was great to give a quick overview of how to implement something, I'm not sure I really got the big picture.Count me in as voting for continued 'special interest' articles when time permits.
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