Re: Can ReiserFS solve this?

[Oleg Drokin <green@namesys.com>]

Hello!

On Mon, Apr 28, 2003 at 04:04:05PM +0200, Erik Terpstra wrote:
> I am looking for a solution for the following problem:
> On a legacy system for newspaper workflow, files are delivered to a 
> certain directory (for example ~/input).
> These files (in TIFF format) can be quite large (10 to 400 MB), they 
> could be copied over the local filesystem, a Samba share or via FTP.
> When large files are copied over the network these files show up in 
> ~/input while they are being copied (you can see the filesize grow).
> Naturally, the best solution would be for the sender to notify the 
> completion of the transfer. But this is not an option because several 
> organizations are involved that do not wish to adapt their software.
> Right now I am wondering if this is something that could be solved on 
> the filesystem level, i.e. is it possible to 'only see files that are 
> not in the process of being transferred'.
> Is this possible with Reiser3? Reiser4? Should it be solved on the 
> filesystem level?

How about such a generic solution:

you create /incoming/.temp (or /incoming.tmp), all the files are being written
there. When write is complete, you just do rename(2) from tempdir to /incoming
This is atomic operation, files will apear immediately in place in their full
size.

FTP knows how to rename stuff at remote location.
I will be surprised if samba does not know how to do that.

Bye,
    Oleg