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[82.69.66.36]) by smtp.gmail.com with ESMTPSA id ffacd0b85a97d-4356996dad0sm1443737f8f.27.2026.01.15.14.40.19 (version=TLS1_3 cipher=TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 bits=256/256); Thu, 15 Jan 2026 14:40:20 -0800 (PST) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2026 22:40:18 +0000 From: David Laight To: "Chuck Lever" Cc: "Dave Chinner" , "Amir Goldstein" , "Jeff Layton" , "Christian Brauner" , "Alexander Viro" , "Chuck Lever" , NeilBrown , "Olga Kornievskaia" , "Dai Ngo" , "Tom Talpey" , "Hugh Dickins" , "Baolin Wang" , "Andrew Morton" , "Theodore Tso" , "Andreas Dilger" , "Jan Kara" , "Gao Xiang" , "Chao Yu" , "Yue Hu" , "Jeffle Xu" , "Sandeep Dhavale" , "Hongbo Li" , "Chunhai Guo" , "Carlos Maiolino" , "Ilya Dryomov" , "Alex Markuze" , "Viacheslav Dubeyko" , "Chris Mason" , "David Sterba" , "Luis de Bethencourt" , "Salah Triki" , "Phillip Lougher" , "Steve French" , "Paulo Alcantara" , "Ronnie Sahlberg" , "Shyam Prasad N" , "Bharath SM" , "Miklos Szeredi" , "Mike Marshall" , "Martin Brandenburg" , "Mark Fasheh" , "Joel Becker" , "Joseph Qi" , "Konstantin Komarov" , "Ryusuke Konishi" , "Trond Myklebust" , "Anna Schumaker" , "Dave Kleikamp" , "David Woodhouse" , "Richard Weinberger" , "Jan Kara" , "Andreas Gruenbacher" , "OGAWA Hirofumi" , "Jaegeuk Kim" , "Christoph Hellwig" , linux-nfs@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, linux-mm@kvack.org, linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org, linux-erofs@lists.ozlabs.org, linux-xfs@vger.kernel.org, ceph-devel@vger.kernel.org, linux-btrfs@vger.kernel.org, linux-cifs@vger.kernel.org, samba-technical@lists.samba.org, linux-unionfs@vger.kernel.org, devel@lists.orangefs.org, ocfs2-devel@lists.linux.dev, ntfs3@lists.linux.dev, linux-nilfs@vger.kernel.org, jfs-discussion@lists.sourceforge.net, linux-mtd@lists.infradead.org, gfs2@lists.linux.dev, linux-f2fs-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [PATCH 00/29] fs: require filesystems to explicitly opt-in to nfsd export support Message-ID: <20260115224018.2988ca25@pumpkin> In-Reply-To: <06dcc4b6-7457-4094-a1c6-586ce518020f@app.fastmail.com> References: <20260115-exportfs-nfsd-v1-0-8e80160e3c0c@kernel.org> <4d9967cc-a454-46cf-909b-b8ab2d18358d@kernel.org> <06dcc4b6-7457-4094-a1c6-586ce518020f@app.fastmail.com> X-Mailer: Claws Mail 4.1.1 (GTK 3.24.38; arm-unknown-linux-gnueabihf) Precedence: bulk X-Mailing-List: linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Thu, 15 Jan 2026 16:37:27 -0500 "Chuck Lever" wrote: > On Thu, Jan 15, 2026, at 4:09 PM, Dave Chinner wrote: > > On Thu, Jan 15, 2026 at 02:37:09PM -0500, Chuck Lever wrote: =20 > >> On 1/15/26 2:14 PM, Amir Goldstein wrote: =20 > >> > On Thu, Jan 15, 2026 at 7:32=E2=80=AFPM Chuck Lever = wrote: =20 > >> >> > >> >> > >> >> > >> >> On Thu, Jan 15, 2026, at 1:17 PM, Amir Goldstein wrote: =20 > >> >>> On Thu, Jan 15, 2026 at 6:48=E2=80=AFPM Jeff Layton wrote: =20 > >> >>>> > >> >>>> In recent years, a number of filesystems that can't present stable > >> >>>> filehandles have grown struct export_operations. They've mostly d= one > >> >>>> this for local use-cases (enabling open_by_handle_at() and the li= ke). > >> >>>> Unfortunately, having export_operations is generally sufficient t= o make > >> >>>> a filesystem be considered exportable via nfsd, but that requires= that > >> >>>> the server present stable filehandles. =20 > >> >>> > >> >>> Where does the term "stable file handles" come from? and what does= it mean? > >> >>> Why not "persistent handles", which is described in NFS and SMB sp= ecs? > >> >>> > >> >>> Not to mention that EXPORT_OP_PERSISTENT_HANDLES was Acked > >> >>> by both Christoph and Christian: > >> >>> > >> >>> https://lore.kernel.org/linux-fsdevel/20260115-rundgang-leihgabe-1= 2018e93c00c@brauner/ > >> >>> > >> >>> Am I missing anything? =20 > >> >> > >> >> PERSISTENT generally implies that the file handle is saved on > >> >> persistent storage. This is not true of tmpfs. =20 > >> >=20 > >> > That's one way of interpreting "persistent". > >> > Another way is "continuing to exist or occur over a prolonged period= ." > >> > which works well for tmpfs that is mounted for a long time. =20 > >>=20 > >> I think we can be a lot more precise about the guarantee: The file > >> handle does not change for the life of the inode it represents. It =20 > > > > > > > > File handles most definitely change over the life of a /physical/ > > inode. Unlinking a file does not require ending the life of the > > physical object that provides the persistent data store for the > > file. > > > > e.g. XFS dynamically allocates physical inodes might in a life cycle > > that looks somewhat life this: > > > > allocate physical inode > > insert record into allocated inode index > > mark inode as free > > > > while (don't need to free physical inode) { > > ... > > allocate inode for a new file > > update persistent inode metadata to generate new filehandle > > mark inode in use > > ... > > unlink file > > mark inode free > > } > > > > remove inode from allocated inode index > > free physical inode > > > > i.e. a free inode is still an -allocated, indexed inode- in the > > filesystem, and until we physically remove it from the filesystem > > the inode life cycle has not ended. > > > > IOWs, the physical (persistent) inode lifetime can span the lifetime > > of -many- files. However, the filesystem guarantees that the handle > > generated for that inode is different for each file it represents > > over the whole inode life time. > > > > Hence I think that file handle stability/persistence needs to be > > defined in terms of -file lifetimes-, not the lifetimes of the > > filesystem objects implement the file's persistent data store. =20 >=20 > Fair enough, "inode" is the wrong term to use here. Usually there is 'generation number' changes when the inode is used for a new file. IIRC the original nfs file handle was the major/minor for the disk partitio= n, the index into the 'on-disk inode table' (the inode number) and the 'generation number' (but I'm sure the length was a power of 2...). It's not surprising Unix uses inode number and file handles. K&R would have used RSM-11/M where 'file directory lookup' was a userspace operation and the kernel only supported 'open by file handle'. Although that got lost between there and ntfs. (Windows IO is definitely based on RSM-11/M though.) David