Reiserfs (kernel level filesystem) may contain squid-specific code

Hi All

Reiserfs (more at http://devlinux.org/namesys) is a new tree-based
filesystem for Linux machines (though I am sure that they are going to
port it to many systems.)

There was an interesting post to the reiserfs list (mail
reiserfs-help@devlinux.com for subscription info) by one of the core
developers. They have been approached by someone (unnamed at present)
who is interested in getting them to put squid-specific code into
reiserfs.

The reiserfs developers know what they are doing (according to all
accounts that I have seen.) I don't doubt that they can make a good
squid-specific filesystem.

What they need, though, is the experience, benchmarking and test
results from real machines. I no longer have access to any real cache
machines (I left is.co.za a while ago) so I cannot offer them any real
stats. If you feel helpful, you might want to mail reiser@idiom.com

When I left is.co.za, I trashed all my mailboxes. This included the
archives of squid-dev, and I feel that they would benefit from being
able to read our previous discussions. If anyone has an archive
of squid-dev, or has the squidfs discussions with Stewart Foster
(long ago...) it would be great to get that thread.

I have already pointed them to the squidfs code, and to the
packetstorm patches, and have written a fairly long mail message of
the issues as I see them. A copy of the thread so far is at
http://www.linux.org.za/oskar/reiserfs/squid/squid-thread

Now that you have heard the "sell you on the idea" side, here is the
downside:

They may only release these changes as gnu source after a few months,
since they would be paid for their development time by the unnamed
company (they have to get money from somewhere... they pay people
to develop reiserfs.)

I suggested that they might be able to find people in the ISP
community willing to donate money to the project if they release
their code under gnu copyright (though the reiserfs code is under
gnu copyright, they wrote all of it. If you write something you can
release it under multiple copyrights; they will probably release it
under gnu in a while, in the meantime it will be commercial) I don't
know if anyone has a large budget for a netapp or something that
they want to throw a small portion of to the namesys people. Perhaps
a group of interested parties can actually outpay the original
requestors. Just a thought.

Thanks for your time.

Oskar
Received on Tue Jul 29 2003 - 13:15:58 MDT