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* Adding subroot information to /proc/mounts, or obtaining that through other means
@ 2007-06-20 20:57 H. Peter Anvin
  2007-06-20 21:03 ` Al Viro
                   ` (2 more replies)
  0 siblings, 3 replies; 41+ messages in thread
From: H. Peter Anvin @ 2007-06-20 20:57 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Linux Kernel Mailing List, linux-fsdevel-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA,
	util-linux-ng-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA

Right now it is actually impossible to conclusively determine a
filesystem-relative path in the presence of bind (and possibly move)
mounts.  This is highly desirable to be able to do in contexts that
involve non-Linux (or not-the-current-instance-of-Linux) accesses to the
filesystem, e.g. other filesystems or bootloaders.

Example:

Let's assume /dev/md6 is mounted on /export.  Then /export/users/foo and
/exports/users/bar are bind-mounted to /home/foo and /home/bar respectively.

/proc/mounts will show:

/dev/md6 /export ext3 rw,data=ordered 0 0
/dev/md6 /home/foo ext3 rw,data=ordered 0 0
/dev/md6 /home/bar ext3 rw,data=ordered 0 0

... with no indication that anything is amiss.  The latter two fields
are confusing, at best.

We could add a field to /proc/mounts to add this information:

/dev/md6 /export ext3 rw,data=ordered 0 0 /
/dev/md6 /home/foo ext3 rw,data=ordered 0 0 /users/foo
/dev/md6 /home/bar ext3 rw,data=ordered 0 0 /users/bar

... or, alternatively, add a subfield to the first field (which would
entail escaping whatever separator we choose):

/dev/md6 /export ext3 rw,data=ordered 0 0
/dev/md6:/users/foo /home/foo ext3 rw,data=ordered 0 0
/dev/md6:/users/bar /home/bar ext3 rw,data=ordered 0 0

One could also consider providing a system call (or ioctl, ...) to get
this information, effectively as an augmentation to stat().  If that's
the case, it would probably be a good thing if this "stat-plus" system
call could in the future be expanded to contain additional information
without having to change a structure every time, perhaps using a method
similar to sendmsg/recvmsg, as ugly as those are.

I'm personally leaning toward the second option (/dev/md6:/users/foo).
Although that might confuse current utilities, those utilities are
*already* liable to get confused by the fact that the line doesn't mean
what they think it means.

	-hpa

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 41+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2007-07-16 18:46 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 41+ messages (download: mbox.gz follow: Atom feed
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2007-06-20 20:57 Adding subroot information to /proc/mounts, or obtaining that through other means H. Peter Anvin
2007-06-20 21:03 ` Al Viro
2007-06-20 21:20   ` H. Peter Anvin
     [not found]     ` <46799A31.10301-YMNOUZJC4hwAvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>
2007-06-21 16:20       ` Ram Pai
     [not found]         ` <1182442837.3342.13.camel-kj2lFfaA5cHMbYB6QlFGEg@public.gmane.org>
2007-06-21 16:29           ` H. Peter Anvin
     [not found]             ` <467AA76F.9090107-YMNOUZJC4hwAvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>
2007-06-21 17:20               ` Ram Pai
2007-06-21 17:31           ` H. Peter Anvin
     [not found]             ` <467AB5EE.3030909-YMNOUZJC4hwAvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>
2007-06-21 17:43               ` H. Peter Anvin
2007-06-22  6:44             ` Ram Pai
     [not found]               ` <1182494654.2812.22.camel-kj2lFfaA5cHMbYB6QlFGEg@public.gmane.org>
2007-06-22  7:06                 ` H. Peter Anvin
2007-06-22  7:34                   ` Ram Pai
2007-06-22  7:51                     ` H. Peter Anvin
     [not found]                       ` <20070625214640.GC29058@ram.us.ibm.com>
2007-06-25 22:00                         ` [RFC PATCH 1/1] VFS: Augment /proc/mount with subroot and shared-subtree Ram Pai
     [not found]                           ` <1182808816.2816.7.camel-kj2lFfaA5cHMbYB6QlFGEg@public.gmane.org>
2007-06-26  8:01                             ` Karel Zak
2007-06-26 14:34                               ` H. Peter Anvin
2007-06-30  9:44                           ` Christoph Hellwig
2007-06-30 12:56                             ` H. Peter Anvin
     [not found]                               ` <468652E2.4050901-YMNOUZJC4hwAvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>
2007-07-11 10:24                                 ` Christoph Hellwig
2007-07-11 15:42                                   ` Ram Pai
     [not found]                         ` <20070625214640.GC29058-kj2lFfaA5cHMbYB6QlFGEg@public.gmane.org>
2007-07-16 18:46                           ` [RFC2 " Ram Pai
     [not found]   ` <20070620210343.GQ21478-rfM+Q5joDG/XmaaqVzeoHQ@public.gmane.org>
2007-06-20 22:24     ` Adding subroot information to /proc/mounts, or obtaining that through other means Karel Zak
     [not found]       ` <20070620222437.GY7226-CxBs/XhZ2BtHjqfyn1fVYA@public.gmane.org>
2007-06-20 22:39         ` H. Peter Anvin
2007-06-21 16:13     ` H. Peter Anvin
2007-06-21 16:49       ` Serge E. Hallyn
     [not found]         ` <20070621164907.GB28311-6s5zFf/epYLPQpwDFJZrxKsjOiXwFzmk@public.gmane.org>
2007-06-21 16:51           ` H. Peter Anvin
2007-06-20 22:33   ` Chuck Lever
     [not found]     ` <4679AB39.4010909-QHcLZuEGTsvQT0dZR+AlfA@public.gmane.org>
2007-06-20 22:41       ` H. Peter Anvin
     [not found]         ` <4679AD0F.3040207-YMNOUZJC4hwAvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>
2007-06-20 22:48           ` Chuck Lever
2007-06-20 22:57             ` H. Peter Anvin
     [not found]               ` <4679B0C5.3030102-YMNOUZJC4hwAvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>
2007-06-20 23:02                 ` Chuck Lever
2007-06-28 14:53   ` Pavel Machek
     [not found]     ` <20070628145308.GD5339-+ZI9xUNit7I@public.gmane.org>
2007-06-28 15:36       ` H. Peter Anvin
     [not found] ` <467994BD.6000403-YMNOUZJC4hwAvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>
2007-06-20 22:05   ` Karel Zak
2007-06-20 22:07     ` H. Peter Anvin
     [not found]     ` <20070620220551.GX7226-CxBs/XhZ2BtHjqfyn1fVYA@public.gmane.org>
2007-06-20 22:41       ` Dr. David Alan Gilbert
2007-06-20 22:46         ` H. Peter Anvin
     [not found]           ` <4679AE5E.4050001-YMNOUZJC4hwAvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>
2007-06-21 19:14             ` Hans-Peter Jansen
     [not found]               ` <200706212114.25705.hpj-2x7n3sizJbFeoWH0uzbU5w@public.gmane.org>
2007-06-21 19:19                 ` H. Peter Anvin
2007-06-20 22:55 ` Nix
2007-06-21 10:45   ` Miklos Szeredi
     [not found]     ` <E1I1KA8-0007Fu-00-VFwzv6uONVrxNFs70CDYszOMxtEWgIxa@public.gmane.org>
2007-06-21 19:42       ` Nix

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