Re: SEUL: Re: Trial or no trial

[Erik Walthinsen <omega@aracnet.com>]

> A system of patches would help, rather than downloading the full system for
> each version (this would also save time, and help to pinpoint changes).
The distribution or testing group should try to find a binary patch program to 
make changes underneath the compression layer.  Essentially do a bindiff of 
the entire extracted tree from old to new.

Of course for those with plenty of proc power, source patches are the way to 
go.

> I'll post a report on the performance issues, but I agree that it doesn't
> help to have Linux relying on MS. It might be possible to adjust the
> partition table around the loopback file; any suggestions?
The partition table wouldn't change, but we would want to keep the loopback 
file contiguous.  That's a trick in itself, and still doesn't give us 
wonderful performance.  That's one of the reasons I say op off the live CD: 
better read performance for RO files, which constitutes most of the system 
anyway.

> Sounds good to me. Is there a way to have, for example, /etc/syslog.conf
> linked to /cdrom/live/etc/syslog.conf, until /etc/syslog.conf is altered,
> when /cdrom/live/etc/syslog.conf is then copied to /etc/syslog.conf?
> Something like the "copy-on-write" memory page system.

Rauli Ruohonen <raulir@fishy.pp.sci.fi> asked this in linux-kernel about a 
week ago: (COW = copy-on-write)

RR> Would it be possible to have COW hardlinks for 2.2?
RR> It would surely be nice, imagine hard linking everything in the source 
RR> tree, and when you make modifications the originals won't be changed.
RR> Lots of saved space :)

No response.  However, his query was relative to kernel source trees.  In the 
case of syslog.conf, /var/log/*, etc., we're dealing either with small enough 
files or files that start out a 0 size anyway, so it probably would be a waste 
to get someone (Linus) to do COW files.

        Erik Walthinsen - Programmer, webmaster, 3D artist, etc.   __
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