Re: historical question: nfs_rename()

[Peter Staubach <staubach@redhat.com>]

Lever, Charles wrote:

>a customer recently pointed out that the rename(2) system call does not
>allow replacing directories, even if they are empty.  RFC1813 at least
>suggests that the server and protocol do allow directory replacement, as
>long as the target is empty.
>
>the culprit appears to be this check in nfs_rename()
>
>        if (S_ISDIR(new_inode->i_mode))
>                goto out;
>
>which causes nfs_rename() to return -EBUSY if the target is a directory.
>
>is there a historical reason why the Linux NFS client does not allow
>directory replacement?  shouldn't the error code be -EISDIR for this
>case?
>

Assuming that the client can handle this situation by ensuring that all
of its caches stay updated, then it seems to me that the client should
just package up the rename and send it off to the server.  It should be
up to the server to decide whether it can handle directory renames of
this type or not.

    Thanx...

       ps


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