safe flash filesystem

[Abraham vd Merwe]

Hi Vipin!

> Yeah, that "except is not free" means it costs >100K USD (for the 
> transaction version) if I remember the quote they gave me.

$125K iirc (;

> I guess I should change the name away from a "database", as I really don't 
> want to do anything more drastic than maybe a linear "recno" type flat file 
> database or something very simple. Something that you or I may have 
> probably implemented anyway to solve our needs to store these config 
> variables in our respective systems.

That's exactly what I've started writing today (:

> I agree that this functionality should be present in the JFFS2 layer 
> itself, but have been unable to convince the powers to be.
> 
> David W. says that he'll entertain a diff -u if we (I) implement the 
> feature, but I don't think that I have the time or the capability to change 
> JFFS2 to implement this functionality all by myself. Plus the issue of the 
> blocked access will remain (even if we solve the power fail issue) and the 
> solution to that may be not be acceptable for inclusion to the regular 
> JFFS2 fs.

I don't know if merging something like this with jffs2 would solve the
problem like you said. I was more thinking of a completely different user
MTD driver to provide an uncached block device and slap a file system on top
of that. Or we can sync() all the time from the file system.

I have to agree that it's probably better to write a library/utilities first
to do a preliminary thing. That way we'd get a functional thing quite fast
and figure out what we did wrong in the first place.

> Maybe you may want to subscribe to the development list on the 
> www.EmbeddedLinuxWorks site and we can take this discussion there. I am 

Where do I subscribe?

> looking for user input to define the feature set of this "config system" 
> (not database :) And I want to make it LGPL (if it does become a lib or 
> task) so that users can link to it without releasing the source of their 
> own code.

I'm in the fortunate position of being able to work on this fulltime for
the next week or so, so if we can figure out a useful specification for this
in a short time, I'm really keen on helping to implement this and LGPL/BSD
license is just fine.

> I can't believe that you and I are the only folks that may be interested in 
> this. Maybe there is an existing solution- we just don't know about it- or 
> other's have not thought about this issue just yet ;)

That's why I mailed here in the first place :P

-- 

Regards
 Abraham

Matrimony is the root of all evil.

__________________________________________________________
 Abraham vd Merwe - 2d3D, Inc.

 Device Driver Development, Outsourcing, Embedded Systems

  Cell: +27 82 565 4451         Snailmail:
   Tel: +27 21 761 7549            Block C, Antree Park
   Fax: +27 21 761 7648            Doncaster Road
 Email: abraham at 2d3d.co.za         Kenilworth, 7700
  Http: http://www.2d3d.com        South Africa

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