Filesystems in the Hurd

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi,

On Fri, Jan 21, 2005 at 01:39:08PM +0100, R. Koot wrote:
> Deva won't be a server :p. I think the problem of booting can be solved 
> more easily. Since every drivers knows it's parent driver, they will be 
> able to find eachother anyway. The main problem is letting applications 
> find the drivers.

Well, I must admit that I didn't follow the whole Deva discussion, but
that's another issue.  ;-)

> Is the filesystem integral to the HURD or only the POSIX personality? 

As I said, filesystems form the Hurd's generic naming service.  They are
not only useful to implement POSIX functionality.

This doesn't mean that you cannot implement another naming service on
top of the Hurd -- it just wouldn't be very useful.

> I'm actually interessted in creating a personality which uses an XML 
> database as the 'filesystem', so I wouldn't need a POSIX style 
> filesystem server. Ofcourse for the POSIX personality this would be 
> great (abtracting devices to /dev and hopefully a slight more rich 
> interface).

Hurd filesystem servers (and most Hurd servers) implement the interfaces
defined in `fs.defs' and `fsys.defs' which include POSIX-like filesystem
access functions.  You can perfectly write a Hurd filesystem whose
backing store is an XML file and POSIX apps will also be able to use it,
transparently.

All this is not specific to the Hurd on L4.

Thanks,
Ludovic.