What new system calls do you want in BSD?

[Steve Nuchia]

In article <1990Feb9.025853.8202 at semi.harris-atd.com> del at thrush.semi.harris-atd.com (Don Lewis) writes:
>If the filesystem is mounted read-only, the atime doesn't get updated, is
>this a security violation?

Hmm... maybe we don't need a new sys call, or a new argument/flag for
old ones, to let backup avoid updating the inode.  Maybe we just need
to remove an arbitrary restriction on an old one.  Namely, allow devices
to be mounted more than once.  If the second mount is RO then you
can back up from it and get most of what you want.

While I'm on the subject, a thought on disk/partition/file system
organization:

The current situation is really a mess, with all the partitioning
and defect mapping burried down in *each* disk driver.  What we
need is truly raw drivers for specific hardware and a generic
indirect driver implementing "cooked" features -- mapping,
partitioning, striping, mirroring -- in a *standard* way.

Neither of these suggestions is particularly difficult, unless
I missed something when I last looked at the relevant code.
-- 
Steve Nuchia	      South Coast Computing Services      (713) 964-2462
"If the conjecture `You would rather I had not disturbed you
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