Re: The argument for fs assistance in handling archives (was: silent semantic changes with reiser4)

Linus Torvalds
2004-09-02T20:22:41Z

On Thu, 2 Sep 2004, Alan Cox wrote:
>
> I asked our desktop people. They want something like inotify because
> dontify doesn't cut it.

Well, dnotify() really _is_ inotify(), since it does actually work on
inodes, not dentries.

I think what they are really complaining about is that dnotify() only
notifies the _directory_ when a file is changed, and they'd like it to
notify the file itself too. Which is a one-liner, really.

Does the following make sense? (Totally untested, use-at-your-own-risk,
I've-never-actually-used-dnotify-in-user-space, whatever).

Linus

===== fs/dnotify.c 1.17 vs edited =====
--- 1.17/fs/dnotify.c 2004-08-09 18:45:22 -07:00
+++ edited/fs/dnotify.c 2004-09-02 13:21:26 -07:00
@@ -160,6 +160,8 @@
if (!dir_notify_enable)
return;

+ __inode_dir_notify(dentry->d_inode, event);
+
spin_lock(&dentry->d_lock);
parent = dentry->d_parent;
if (parent->d_inode->i_dnotify_mask & event) {