The SVCS Linux SIG is a group of hobyists in the San Jose, California bay area with interests in Linux and other low-cost Unix-like systems. Meetings are held the first Wednesday of the month, and are free and open to the public. Most meetings are general question and answer meetings, but we sometimes have technical presentations and product demonstrations. We are a Special Interest Group of the Silicon Valley Computer Society, a PC users group. (For more information on SVCS call 408-986-9254.)
General Meeting Information: Date: First Wednesday of the month, 7:00pm to 9:00pm Place: Carl's Jr. 2551 N. First St. San Jose, CA 95131 Take 101 to Trimble, go east 1 mile to 1st street. Carl's Jr. is in the shopping center on your right. (south-west corner of 1st and Trimble) Info: Dan Kionka, 408-567-5043, dkionka@worldtalk.com. Bill Miller, 408-253-3175, slix@svpal.org http://www2.worldtalk.com/svcs.linux/
This site has information about the group as well as other useful information for bay area Linux users.
Hans Reiser will talk on a new file system he created.
Reiserfs is a new Linux file system which employs balanced tree algorithms to save space for small files and the tail ends of large files by packing several of them into the same block. It also saves 10-20% in time for larger files by using 4k blocks in place of 1k blocks without paying a penalty of wasting space as a result of the larger block size. It is much more efficient for large directories, and employs a new technique called preserve lists which allows shrinking directories efficiently and asynchronously without risking corruption if power is lost during the shrinking. Persons with news spools, object request brokers, or other applications that generate large numbers of small files or large directories will find it of substantial value. General users will find it moderately faster. This file system will be made available for beta-testing at the talk (meaning that it is appropriate for news spools and experimenting, it does not crash for the author, but users will want to wait until it completes the beta-testing period to use it for home directories and other mission critical applications.)
Hans Reiser is the owner of the Namesys, a file system technology development company which develops, tests, and market samples new file system technologies using Linux. The company sells a combination of exceptions to the software's GPL, plus integration and customization services, to commercial OS and file server vendors.
Coming July 26. See SVLUG for more information.
Last modified 07/11/97 by Dan Kionka (dkionka@worldtalk.com).