Re: [patch 12/16] fix race between writeback and unlink

[Benjamin LaHaise]

On Tue, Jun 04, 2002 at 02:37:26PM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> That's a good start, but before even egtting that far there is some need
> for a way to get a picture of the FS layout in a reasonably fs-independent
> way.

Al Viro actually came up with a beautiful mechanism for it: present 
the filesystem's metadata as a filesystem itself.  Blocks within a 
particular inode can then be viewed with cat, and suggested replacements 
can be made via echo.  Such a best could be called ext2metafs and work 
cooperatively with the existing filesystem code.  It's quite an elegant 
design that has utility beyond the simple case of defragmenting.

> Add a nice graphical front-end, and you can make it a useful screen-saver.

Heh, that would be excellent.

		-ben
-- 
"You will be reincarnated as a toad; and you will be much happier."