IRIX kernel filesystem API?
Tony Mantler
Does IRIX have a publicly accessable filesystem API? That is to say, is
it possible for Joe Average Developer to write a filesystem for IRIX?
I've been considering playing around with a project on my Indigo2, but
it requires read-only access to a UDF filesystem (the fs type used on
DVDs), which doesn't appear to be currently supported.
If there is a public filesystem API, where is it documented? I didn't
have much luck searching techpubs.sgi.com.
Cheers - Tony 'Nicoya' Mantler :)
--
Tony "Nicoya" Mantler - Renaissance Nerd Extraordinaire - nic...@apia.dhs.org
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada -- http://nicoya.feline.pp.se/
Dave Olson
| Not sure exactly where to post this, so this will have to do...
|
| Does IRIX have a publicly accessable filesystem API? That is to say, is
| it possible for Joe Average Developer to write a filesystem for IRIX?
Nope, not really. In particular, the internals of the buffer cache
have changed even in in the 6.5.x series, in ways that might break 3rd
party filesystems. To the best of my knowledge, the only 3rd party
kernel filesystem ever done was AFS, and clearcase, and even those had
a lot of internal SGI assistance (and even they got broken a few
times).
Doing a user-level filesystem (even doing it through the loopback filesystem,
so that all the normal system calls work) is doable. Used to be that
the public domain amd automounter had some code that could be used as a
starting point for this (I don't know if that's still the case). That
didn't make it easy, but a few folks succeeded.
For something like a DVD, doing it completely in user mode might be
feasible (not even bother with hooks into the kernel).
Dave Olson
ol...@bengaltech.com
http://www.bengaltech.com/public/dave
Tony Mantler
ol...@bengaltech.com wrote:
I was considering that a userspace solution might be an answer. It would
probably work reasonably well for what I want to do.
I don't suppose there's any hope of getting real UDF filesystem support
from SGI?
I can understand not having actual DVD support for all the legal MPAA
hassles they'd have to go through (DVD playback was nixed in QNX RTP for
this exact reason), but I would have maybe hoped for at least DVD-Rom
type functionality.
Alexis Cousein
> I don't suppose there's any hope of getting real UDF filesystem support
> from SGI?
>
FWIW, Tracertech (now owned by another company) do support UDF on IRIX,
but only if you buy some other products to go with it (IIRC).
--
<these messages express my own views, not those of my employer>
Alexis Cousein Senior Systems Engineer
SGI Belgium and Luxemburg a...@brussels.sgi.com