Computer Science research done on Beowulf class systems

[Robert G. Brown]

On Thu, 10 Jun 1999, andrew close wrote:

> i apologize if this is an extremely ignorant question,
> but since there has been a lot of talk about it
> lately...
> 
> what is a journaling file system, and why is it so
> sought after?  

I'm not absolutely certain, but I believe that it is a filesystem that
(sort of, I'm not actually sure how they accomplish the journaling) only
stores and indexes diffs; nothing is ever actually deleted and all
changes are always reversible.  They are very useful to companies that
require a full, auditible trail of all informational transactions.  They
are thus like CVS or RCS, sort of, but for a whole filesystem.
Obviously very space inefficient but just the ticket for certain kinds
of applications and operations.

   rgb

Robert G. Brown	                       http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/
Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305
Durham, N.C. 27708-0305
Phone: 1-919-660-2567  Fax: 919-660-2525     email:rgb@phy.duke.edu