Can ReiserFS solve this?

[Erik Terpstra <erik@solidcode.net>]

Hi,

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).

However TIFF files are only useful for further processing when they are 
complete.

Initially we solved this problem by monitoring the input directory and 
make our applications look at the files until they stop growing, but 
this isn't a very elegant and reliable method.

After a while we discovered the UNIX 'fuser' command so that we could 
see if the incoming file is still being transferred or not.
This works fine but it's still not very elegant, and it requires root 
privileges for the applications involved in the workflow.

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?

Any thoughts on this matter are appreciated.

Kind regards,

   Erik Terpstra.