Re: [patch 3/7] fs, notify: Add file handle entry into inotify_inode_mark

[Pavel Emelyanov <xemul@parallels.com>]

On 11/14/2012 02:08 PM, Tvrtko Ursulin wrote:
> On Wednesday 14 November 2012 13:58:12 Cyrill Gorcunov wrote:
>> On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 09:50:55AM +0000, Tvrtko Ursulin wrote:
>>>>> You could not use a pointer and then allocate your buffers on the
>>>>> check
>>>>> point operation, freeing on restore?
>>>>
>>>> The problem is not allocating the memory itself but rather the time when
>>>> the information needed (ie the dentry) is available. The only moment
>>>> when we can use dentry of the target file/directory is at
>>>> inotify_new_watch, that's why i need to compose fhandle that early. At
>>>> any later point we simply have no dentry to use.
>>>
>>> But you do not fundamentally need the dentry to restore a watch, right?
>>
>> dentry only needed to encode the file handle.
>>
>>> Couldn't you restore, creating a new restore path if needed, using the
>>> inode which is pinned anyway while the watch exists?
>>
>> plain inode is not enough as far as i can tell, iow i don't see the way
>> to restore path from inode solely. or there something i miss?
> 
> I don't know, as I said I was not following this at all until now. Just 
> throwing in ideas.
> 
> I thought, since inotify does not use the path or dentry outside the system 
> call at all, perhaps you need a different entry point allowing you to restore 
> the watch using the inode or something. Assuming life time of objects and 
> stuff in C&R world would allow you that. Since you don't need the full path, 
> just something 64 bytes long, I assumed that could be the case.

Well, the kernel already has all the API we need but one -- it shows us _nothing_
about the inode being watched. And we'd appreciate any information about it. Even
the ino:dev pair would work. We propose to show the handle because we believe, that
such API is better that ino:dev. You can get the handle, call the open_by_handle_at
right at once and get much much more information about the inode with any other
API (e.g. calling fstat() will give you the ino:dev pair). Having just ino:dev
pair at hands is not that flexible.

> Regards,
> 
> Tvrtko
> 
> .
>