New to Kernel newbie

[Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu]

On Fri, 22 Aug 2014 21:39:42 +0530, manoj kumar said:
> i am new to kernelnewbie. I would like to work on the VFS/Filesystem sub
> system. Any guidance towards the same is much appreciated.

Step 0: Figure out *why* you want to work on filesystems, pick a *specific*
goal, and pick up a basic understanding of filesystem design.  For this, it's
helpful to look at how a number of different filesystems (not all Linux) have
been designed - everything from the ext[234] series, to SGI's xfs, to
Microsoft's NTFS.  Looking at old mainframe designs (like the VTOC/catalog
setup used on IBM's OS/360 through MVS systems) can help as well (you think
"extents" in ext are a new thing?  OS/360 used those way back in 1964:

http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/zos/v2r1/topic/com.ibm.zos.v2r1.idas300/dscbft.htm

Things to focus on - tradeoffs that have to be made, and why given systems
make given choices.  There's good reasons why ext1 and ext2 *didn't* use
extents - and good reasons why ext4 does.  You need to understand stuff like that.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 848 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.kernelnewbies.org/pipermail/kernelnewbies/attachments/20140822/a2489c79/attachment.bin