Your OS design

[mpp.eox3]

the '"CLI/GUI" independance seems hard to achive ... When you say "running mozilla in BASH", are you talking about launching mozilla from a shell and than have it executing in its own window or do you really believe you'll be able to translate requests for scrollbars, icons, truetype'd text and GIFs into ANSI characters ?

Yep, why not? It will look a bit crappy if there's no option to zoom into the images, but it will work anyway:
http://www.stud.uni-karlsruhe.de/~uvvm/ ... p?coding=2

...It would also be possible to play doom in textmode. Take a look in the main section for an enhanced wolfenstein style engine and press the 'g' key (java applet).
Maybe I'll port this to my "kernel" so one's able to play a match during start-up /* well when I've time & motivation for coding again.. :'( */

[DennisCGc]

Hehe, cool, but some images are looking weird (I'm not kidding!)...
I'm already imaging playing doom in text mode

[mpp.eox3]

Well I'm currently carrying the idea of implementing some LZW into the kernel to decompress it at boottime. Not that I really need it - my kernel: 186 kb [bloatware^tm] - it's just for fun

- The LZW patent expired just a few days ago in Germany -

And in other countries as well.
And because it's really veery simple to implement... I currently don't know what's up with arithmetic coder patents, that would be a nice thing too.

/* Using other people's compression libs is boring */

Does anybody use kernel compression?

I just got an idea - compression would be useful when you have to page stuff to disk. So that's another reason. WinXP uses compression when it hibernates (suspend2disk) to increase speed.

$0.242

[Pype.Clicker]

a compressed swapfile ? hmm .. i'm uncertain about the possible benefit. It's usually hard to tell which data you'll need next to the currently requested frame.

[DennisCGc]

Hey,

I thought up an FS design, if you have comments post here, and why!
Okay (before you think omfg, it looks like a bit of FAT32):
file entry:

the file length could be of any size, and no extension are here included, end is ASCIIZ
then you have the size, I thought 8 bytes SHOULD be enough.

then there's priority.
This could be handy when cleaning disk space, a sort of (hopefully) intelligent FS
0   temp,junk,etc.
1   links
2   execs
3   docs, text,etc.
4   system files (ignored)
5   (ignored) directories

And at last there is the cluster/linked sectors entry
which is 4 bytes
Then you have the registration manner, which looks like FAT32.
Haven't really thought about this though.
But I thought it can have max. 5 copies of the original, and that's kept synced all the time.
(maybe by running a daemon, or such )

DennisCGc.

PS. I was thinking of having an accesstime/date like, for again cleaning up your disk help.
what do you recommend me of what putting there ? (example, unix time)
PPS. I didn't think attributes were important, the priority is replacing it a bit.

[Pype.Clicker]

i don't want to sound rude, but your "priority" mainly looks like "base directories" to me (/tmp, /bin, /home, etc.) and they do not address the role of file attribute: telling *who* has the right to do *what* with files.

or is there some subtlety i've missed ?

[Candy]

i don't want to sound rude, but your "priority" mainly looks like "base directories" to me (/tmp, /bin, /home, etc.) and they do not address the role of file attribute: telling *who* has the right to do *what* with files.

or is there some subtlety i've missed ?

I think he does have a point with the variable telling how important the files are, but I think he made his explanation points too much like the plain users view of the system. If it could add a few bits saying whether user documents are directly downloadable from the internet, are on the most recent backup, or are just plain garbage temporarily stored there or a pagefile that can be deleted at next boot, that'd make "No more space on ..." nearly a thing of the past. At the expense of redownloading etc, but imo most people buffer gigabytes on their harddisk without ever using it, while they could be easily restored from an original game cd or something like that without a hitch of problems. However, on my system it'd probably tell me to start backing up those mp3's since it takes half my harddisk

Still, I do think it has a place in modern filesystems, especially with big game files that are directly off a game cd and stuff like unused pagefiles and big documents off the internet that you barely read, and that could be redownloaded at the gain of a few megs on the disk (which for people with a 10mbit uncapped internet downstream is a good thing).

[DennisCGc]

i don't want to sound rude, but your "priority" mainly looks like "base directories" to me (/tmp, /bin, /home, etc.) and they do not address the role of file attribute: telling *who* has the right to do *what* with files.

or is there some subtlety i've missed ?

The who is the user who's giving the priority.
In this case the user can tell what files are important.

If it could add a few bits saying whether user documents are directly downloadable from the internet, are on the most recent backup, or are just plain garbage temporarily stored there or a pagefile that can be deleted at next boot, that'd make "No more space on ..." nearly a thing of the past

Good point...
Maybe the priority list should be extended, or such, or a bit should be added, like downloadable (intergration with the internet ) /backup bit.
It'd make "No more space on ..." nearly a thing of the past, unless you marked all your files as 2,3,4,5

[Brendan]

Hi,

Maybe the priority list should be extended, or such, or a bit should be added, like downloadable (intergration with the internet ) /backup bit.
It'd make "No more space on ..." nearly a thing of the past, unless you marked all your files as 2,3,4,5

If you were going to do that you may also want to add a "from" field to the directory entry, containing a URL (e.g. ftp:://somewhere.org/files/theFile.exe). When the downloadable file is deleted to save space, the directory entry is marked as deleted and the disk space is freed. When/if the file is needed again the OS would use the "from" field to automatically download the file back to where it once was.


Cheers,

Brendan

[Pype.Clicker]

... or a "backup on" field, pointing at the description of the CD where things were back-up'd

[Candy]

Maybe the priority list should be extended, or such, or a bit should be added, like downloadable (intergration with the internet ) /backup bit.
It'd make "No more space on ..." nearly a thing of the past, unless you marked all your files as 2,3,4,5

If you were going to do that you may also want to add a "from" field to the directory entry, containing a URL (e.g. ftp:://somewhere.org/files/theFile.exe). When the downloadable file is deleted to save space, the directory entry is marked as deleted and the disk space is freed. When/if the file is needed again the OS would use the "from" field to automatically download the file back to where it once was.

... or a "backup on" field, pointing at the description of the CD where things were back-up'd

might call this an alternative-location, allowing more of them?

[Legend]

Symbolic Links? ;D

[Candy]

Symbolic Links? ;D

Did you read the story?

The point was to store a link to another file with the copy of the file, or with an empty inode. Storing a symbolic link inside an existing file isn't possible.

[Legend]

It isn't possible under Linux this way, and yes I have read the story, and basically it seems to be about now about replacing a file with a symbolic link (at least when downloading from the internet), somehow symbolic links refined!

[DennisCGc]

If you were going to do that you may also want to add a "from" field to the directory entry, containing a URL (e.g. ftp:://somewhere.org/files/theFile.exe).

... or a "backup on" field, pointing at the description of the CD where things were back-up'd

Good idea, I was already thinking about that.
Those fields could simply be one field.
At least one or two backup fields (yeah, both internet urls or CD field) should be enough, I think.

So now it would look like this:
(with some modifications, like cluster size should be 8 bytes, 64 bit)
[table][tr][td]deleted(1)[/td][td]filename[/td][td]0[/td][td]size(8)[/td][td]priority(1)[/td][td]cluster(8)[/td][td]backupreference[/td][td]0[/td]
[/tr][/table]

But now I have a question, what if a user deletes one file.
And he creates a file, in the same directory of course.
What should I do ? overwriting it or adding it ?
If adding it, then the directory list could becoming HUGE!
If deleting it, the backupreference won't be needed.
Should I give the user the ability to do that ? or should I use the priority bit ([me=DennisCGc]thinks that should be better )[/me]

DennisCGc.