Subject: USERFS ALPHA Version 0.8 Released
From: [email-masked] (Jeremy Fitzhardinge)
Date: Sat, 20 Aug 1994 15:51:58 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.announce

[]
                     Announcing: userfs version 0.8

Userfs is a mechanism by which normal user processes can be a Linux
filesystem, similar to Plan 9 filesystems or The Hurd's translators.
There are many uses for this, including:

* Prototype filesystems *

Prototype new block allocation algorithms in a user process and debug
with gdb before going into the compile-crash-reboot cycle of kernel
development.

* Infrequent use filesystems *

You want to mount "FooBaz 0X" filesystems under Linux, but you don't
want it that often, and you don't need it to be maximum speed.  Rather
than trying to get the kernel itself to understand, or write
specialised tools, write a filesystem program.

* Add capabilities to existing filesystems *

Want compression, encryption, ACLs?  Have a process to mirror an
existing file tree, but with your own extentions and semantics.

* Completely virtual filesystems and new interfaces *

Add a filesystem-type interface to an existing mechanism, or a
filesystem interface as a new way of representing data.  Sick of FTP?
How about:

	$ mkdir /ftp/tsx-11.mit.edu
	$ cd /ftp/tsx-11.mit.edu/pub/Linux
	$ cp README $HOME

This release has some actual implementations of filesystems doing
things that I've been promising for the last few versions.  It will
probably be much more interesting for non-programmers.

This version is a loadable kernel module which only needs a very small
kernel patch.  The patch supplied is against Linux 1.1.44.

The only really significant change in this release is a lot more work
on ftpfs has been done.  It is more stable and functional, and
probably worth looking at for some semi-serious work.

The release comes with six complete filesystems:
   - ftpfs, a filesystem for FTP access. This allows multilple FTP
     sites to be accessed as a filesystem, with a persistent cache of
     data.
   - homer, which simply creates a directory containing symlinks
     to every user's home directory.  Mounted on /u, it makes a
     passible replacement for '~' expansion in your shell which
     works for everything.
   - intfs, an experimental filesystem in which file contents can
     be generated by arbitary shell scripts on the fly as they are
     read.
   - egfs, a very simple example/tutorial filesystem

And the contributed filesystems:
   - arcfs which allows a compressed tar
     file to be mounted readonly and browsed as a filesystem.
     (Dave Gymer)
   - mailfs, a simple mail-reading filesystem
     (Davor Jadrijevic)

Thanks also to Ulrich Dessauer for his C library interface and various
filesystems using it, including an OS/9 filesystem.

This release is available from:
	sunsite.unc.edu:pub/Linux/ALPHA/userfs/userfs-0.8.tar.gz
	tsx-11.mit.edu:pub/linux/ALPHA/userfs/userfs-0.8.tar.gz

On sunsite, userfs will be in pub/Linux/Incoming until it is moved
into the correct place.

** Note for 1.1.45 **

The patch supplied changes linux/config.in, which is a copy of the
machine specific one in linux/arch/i386/config.in.  The best thing
to do is to copy the file unchanged from linux/linux/arch/config.in
before applying the patch, copy it back then do a "make config".

* Mailing List *

There is a USERFS channel on the linux activists list server.
To subscribe, send mail with
	X-Mn-Admin: join USERFS
as the first line to [email-masked]

Please send bugs and comments to Jeremy Fitzhardinge <[email-masked]>
or to the mailing list.  Send me mail if you find userfs interesting
and intend doing something with it.

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