[Linux-cachefs] fscache/cachefs ready for use?

[David Howells]

Paul Archer <parcher at bcm.edu> wrote:

> I hate to ask such a basic question, but since I can't find a homepage for
> cFS/FSc development (is there one?) that would answer this question, here
> goes:

This is it for now:

	http://people.redhat.com/~dhowells/cachefs/

And:

	http://people.redhat.com/steved/fscache/

> Is cachefs/fscache usable?

Yes... but it may well change.  I'm trying to get it upstream.

> And if so, is there a HOWTO or instructions for setup somewhere?

	Documentation/filesystems/caching/

in the kernel sources with the patches applied.

> I've seen references to a couple of mount options, but from my experience
> with cachefs on Solaris, I'm guessing there's gotta be some initial work to
> specify where the backing store goes on disk, and that sort of thing.

There is, but it's as minimal as I can make it:

	echo "dir /dir/where/I/want/my/cache" >/etc/cachefilesd.conf
	cachefilesd

for example.

/dir/where/I/want/my/cache must be a directory on a filesystem that supports
xattrs and bmap (ext3 will do if you turn xattrs on).  You can tune the free
space parameters as per the documentation.  I recommend you choose a
filesystem with a block size of PAGE_SIZE (4KB on i386) - this can be tuned
with e2fsck.

David