[TriLUG] Anyone here know much about kernel programming?

[Paul Bennett]

Just had a thought about backups...

On Windows, you can get a number of products that sit between the  
filesystem driver and the block device driver. While a backup is  
occurring, this extra driver caches writes to the disk, and presents them  
back as successful (and returns the "written" data to the filesystem  
driver if a read is requested). Once a block is backed up, any writes for  
that block are flushed to the block device, and freed from the cache.

The net result? Invisible, consistent backups on a live running system.

I wonder whether Linux has something that can do that, instead of having  
to script up "take snapshot, backup snapshot, blow snapshot away" stuff?

If not, I hereby suggest that someone should make one. It'd have to be  
something in the kernel, probably fairly deeply in the kernel.

Anyone here got enough experience on kernel programming to help me learn  
how to make an equivalent dealie in the Linux kernel?


Thanks,


--
Paul