From: David W. <dav...@ia...> - 2002-12-09 08:40:35
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> I haven't really paid attention much, but is this extra file information > what would be considered metadata? Does Linux have no support for > metadata without going about it in a hackish way? Or is it just that > the filesystem driver actually needs to use this metadata and the way > the vfs is, it can't easily be done? To the people who designed Unix, metadata is a hack. The mantra is 'everything is a file'. If confused, repeat. :) Neither windows nor Unix have a good way of exposing it. The tricks that unix has done with 'proc' filesystems and the like have gone one way and the Windows "require a special tool to manipulate it" theory has gone another. To each their own, I guess. The 'everything is a file' school gets you into some interesting situations when the underlying data has strange dependencies--like the VMU fs does. I'm not even sure why we want such a thing. I'm inclined to just treat the memory in the VMU as a single chunk and make a user mode tool to manipulate it. That keeps strange policy out of the kernel and removes the chance that someone will not realize that these files and directories presented by the vmufs are 'special' and muck things up. Users, life would be so much simpler without them. ;) Cheers, David |