Re: FS union

Jens Benecke (jens@pinguin.conetix.de)
Thu, 17 Jun 1999 22:02:10 +0200


On Wed, Jun 16, 1999 at 08:32:57AM -0400, Lou Grinzo wrote:

> One possibility that I don't think anyone has mentioned is giving the
> user or programmer finer-grained control over the name space for the
> unioned FS's. In other words, there could easily be times when you would
> want to make just certain files in the underlying FS take precedence in
> the name space.

Something I would be _very_ thankful to see is a per-user basis of unions,
i.e. I mount several directories 'over' each other (not necessarily on
different devices) and each user sees only the 'lowest' and 'his/her'
directory entries, using a copy-on-write basis for the 'lowest'
directorie's files.

This way, you could save a LOT of space and work when being a file server
for a big windows network using _large_ applications that are not network
capable, i.e. always store their user configuration files in $APPDIR and
not $HOME. Nowadays, I solve this using hard links and giving each user
his/her own directory (quite simple for Samba) but I think unions could be
a better approach.

Also, mounting a CDROM over a /tmp directory might enable you to run apps
directly from CD, i.e. a kernel build or something. This would save a lot
of symlinking and tweaking.

-- 
_ciao, Jens_______________________________ http://www.pinguin.conetix.de

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