Re: VSTafs partitions

[root <root@dorka.pcug.org.au> writes:]

> Well I have VSTa running now (after a massive repartitioning effort).
>Now I'd like to create a vstafs partition. Small question: without the /dev
>entries used under UNIX, how do we refer to physical disk partitions?

Mumble. I'm thinking about folding namer paths into the main open() code
path. Currently they're distinct, and it's causing most of your confusion.

>The dos
>line in the boot.lst file refers to its partition as wd:wd0_dos1 (sorry, I'm
>using Linux at the moment and I can't remember if that last digit is 1 or 0).
>There doesn't seem to be an entry for this in the /namer/disk directory, so
>when I try to create a vstafs partition by typing mkfs_vfs with either wd:wd0_
>p3
>or wd:wd0_p2 or wd:wd0_dos2 (that could be a 1 :)) and of course the size of t
>he
>partition, it just bombs out on me with a variety of error messages.

The namer path should disk/wd. This maps a path to a port number. When you
mount that port number in your namespace, the server at that port number
looks like a directory tree. So disk/wd:wd0_dos0 is shorthand,
conceptually, for "mount disk/wd on /FOO, and then open /FOO/wd0_dos0". I
say conceptually, because it doesn't really join your filesystem namespace.

Things should become clearer if you do:

% mount disk/wd /dev/wd
% ls /dev/wd

You can now use /dev/wd/wd0_dos0 (or whatever) as a regular file, in much
the same way as /dev entries in UNIX. When you're finished fiddling with
your disk, you can also:

% umount /dev/wd

You should be able to run vstafs as:

% vstafs -p disk/wd:wd0_dos0 fs/vfs &

Which starts a filesystem from the wd0_dos0 entry of the server registered
(under namer) as disk/wd. It registers this filesystem (under namer) as
fs/vfs. Once it's running, you could:

% mount fs/vfs /v
% ls /v

And see your filesystem under /v.

                                                Andy
Received on Fri Jun 16 05:57:31 1995