Question re inodes

[Keith Bostic]

In article <2999 at tahoe.unr.edu>, ed at tahoe.unr.edu (Ed Wishart) writes:
> This is not a bug, just a question that I don't know where to post.
> The 2.10 BSD file system uses 64 byte inodes containing 40 bytes
> of address space.  They use only 21 of these bytes for access to
> data blocks, 4 of these being direct addresses.  Why waste this
> space when there are addresses left over that could be used to 
> access more direct blocks?

Don't know if Casey (Leedom) still reads this group or not -- he might
remember better than I do.  Anyhow, the problem is that 2.9BSD had that
particular piece of wrongness in it, and fixing it meant Changing The
File System.  Given how tough that is to do and how well-tested the
conversion tools have to be, we talked each other out of fixing it.

Anyhow, a quite reasonable "fix" for 2.10BSD would be to use those
blocks.  Of course, if you're going to change the file system, the
3-byte inode compression should also be ripped out.

--keith