Re: [patch 4/8] fs, exportfs: Add export_encode_inode_fh helper

[Cyrill Gorcunov <gorcunov@openvz.org>]

On Wed, Aug 15, 2012 at 06:06:23PM -0400, J. Bruce Fields wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 16, 2012 at 01:02:37AM +0400, Cyrill Gorcunov wrote:
> > On Wed, Aug 15, 2012 at 04:45:46PM -0400, J. Bruce Fields wrote:
> > > On Wed, Aug 15, 2012 at 01:21:20PM +0400, Cyrill Gorcunov wrote:
> > > > To provide fsnotify object inodes being watched without
> > > > binding to alphabetical path we need to encode them with
> > > > exportfs help. This patch adds a helper which operates
> > > > with plain inodes directly.
> > > 
> > > I don't get it--this seems like a really roundabout way to get inode and
> > > generation number, if that's all you want.
> > 
> > We can re-open the targets via filehandle on restore, this was the idea.
> > All this series aimed to achieve the way to restore objects after checkpoit,
> > thus we need to provide additional information which would be enough.
> 
> For this to work it'll need to be something you can pass to
> open_by_handle_at, won't it?

Yes, and for inotify we print out this handled via fdinfo, later on restore
we use it together with open_by_handle_at.

> 
> > > On the other hand, if you want a real filehandle then wouldn't you want
> > > to e.g. call the filesystem's ->encode_fh() if necessary, as
> > > exportfs_encode_fh() does?
> > 
> > Well, one of the problem I hit when I've been trying to use encode_fh
> > is that every new implementation of encode_fh will require some size
> > (even unknown) in buffer where encoded data pushed. Correct me please
> > if I'm wrong. But with export_encode_inode_fh there is a small buffer
> > with pretty known size needed on stack needed for printing data in
> > fdinfo.
> 
> You can just give encode_fh a too-small data and let it fail if it's not
> big enough.
> 
> (In practice I think everyone supports NFSv3 filehandles which have a
> maximum size of 64 bytes.)

I'll think about it, thanks!

	Cyrill