Re: Again:request for integration inotify in FUSE and fs like CIFS.

[Stef Bon <stefbon@gmail.com>]

2011/3/19 Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>:

>>
>> I hope you get the picture,
>
> Why, yes, we do.  You do not.  It is up to you to implement that; it is
> up to us to decide whether the result is acceptable for merge...
>

OK, I see. I've posted here because there is other location for me to
discuss this issue.
I'm not that experienced in kernel develpment to just come with a
merge right away. I needed some feedback to my idea.

> FWIW, it's a bloody bad idea; inotify is not a generally usable mechanism.
> There is no way to make it work for non-local filesystems.  You might be
> able to hack up something in FUSE protocol; getting FUSE *servers* to
> honour that is something entirely different, seeing that there are tons
> of them and these codebases are not in any way under control of kernel
> developers - or any single group, for that matter.  Then there is NFS,
> where even the protocol side of things is not up to us, not to mention
> the server implementations.  The same goes for CIFS/SMB, only there the
> odds of affecting the protocol (or one of the common servers - you know,
> the native Windows one) are even slimmer.

That's right. I know it will not work always, the backend (or server)
has to support it.
With CIFS/SMB it's even more complicated then with FUSE. And with the
tons of FUSE fs's,
yes a lot of them will not use it, but that normal. A lot of them do
not make use of Extended Attributes while it's possible, FUSE supports
them.

I only want very much inotify supported on the construction I'm working on.

>
> Program relying on inotify is relying on specific configuration.  Namely,
> the areas of the mount tree it's going to watch belonging to one of the
> filesystems where inotify works.  Depending on what you are trying to do
> there might be saner (and more robust) ways to go - hard to tell without
> knowing what are you trying to achieve.

Well I'm building a construction where a FUSE fs play's an important role.
This FUSE fs (fuse-workspace) is basically an overlay fs, so the
backend are filesystems
on the same host, possibly mounted by the automounter.

Well a userspace daemon is possible. There are already sollutions
here, like gamin/fam.

Any suggestions are welcome and appreciated.

Stef Bon
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