Re: [PATCH 1/2] vfs: make real_lookup do dentry revalidation with i_mutex held

[Ian Kent <raven@themaw.net>]

H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> Ian Kent wrote:
>> Sorry, I haven't had time to do more on this.
>> There is also the issue of what to do about removing the autofs module
>> and renaming autofs4 to autofs, as this will break the autofs module.
>>
> 
> The autofs module is pretty much historic at this point.  I say just
> nuke it.

But while I sort out the details of changing autofs4 to handle the
change to path lookup locking there are a couple of things work out for
the rename of autofs4 to autofs.

It's true that removing autofs shouldn't be a big deal but existing
users of autofs4 will have a problem. Particularly if people run a newer
kernel on and older distribution.

We probably have to accept that people  doing insmod with a specific
path are going to have a problem and they shouldn't use that method
anyway. But, AFAICS using a MODULE_ALIAS() in the kernel module will
allow for the name change but doesn't seem to take account of the
directory name change. Is that correct?

There are those that may have an alias in the module-init-tools
configuration as well. But we need get rid of that practice as well as,
for a long time now, the alias hasn't been needed.

Anyone have any thoughts how we might better handle these difficulties?

Ian