Re: silent semantic changes with reiser4

[David Lang <david.lang@digitalinsight.com>]

so far the best answer that I've seen is a slight varient of what Hans is 
proposing for the 'file-as-a-directory'

make the base file itself be a serialized version of all the streams and 
if you want the 'main' stream open file/. (or some similar varient)

this doesn't address the hard-link issue, but it should handle the backup 
problems (your backup software just goes through the files and what it 
gets is suitable for backups).

you will ask what serializer to user, and my answer is to let one of the 
streams tell you, and have the kernel make a call out to userspace to 
execute the appropriate program (note that this means that tar is not put 
into the kernel)

in fact it may make sense to just open file/file to get at the 'main' 
stream of the file (there may be cases where the concept of a single main 
stream may not make sense)

so if this solves the tool/backup problem then we can look and figure out 
if there's a reasonable way to solve the hard-link problem

David Lang

On Tue, 8 Sep 2004, Christer Weinigel wrote:

> Date: 08 Sep 2004 00:13:12 +0200
> From: Christer Weinigel <christer@weinigel.se>
> To: Hans Reiser <reiser@namesys.com>
> Cc: Christer Weinigel <christer@weinigel.se>,
>     David Masover <ninja@slaphack.com>,
>     Horst von Brand <vonbrand@inf.utfsm.cl>, Spam <spam@tnonline.net>,
>     Tonnerre <tonnerre@thundrix.ch>, Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>,
>     Pavel Machek <pavel@ucw.cz>, Jamie Lokier <jamie@shareable.org>,
>     Chris Wedgwood <cw@f00f.org>, viro@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk,
>     Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org,
>     linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Alexander Lyamin aka FLX <flx@namesys.com>,
>     ReiserFS List <reiserfs-list@namesys.com>
> Subject: Re: silent semantic changes with reiser4
> 
> Hans Reiser <reiser@namesys.com> writes:
>
>> No, we want files and directories that can do what streams can do.
>> This means files that are also directories, plugins that aggregate the
>> contents of a directory, files that inherit stat data, maybe I forget
>> something ---- it is on my website.
>>
>> Streams themselves are a bad idea because they are a filesystem inside
>> of a file which is double the overhead, and they fragment the
>> namespace.
>
> There really isn't a difference between your files are directories
> think and named streams that can be accessed with openat.  Both are
> concepts that won't fit into the classical Unix entity "file".
>
> As far as I can tell, windows named streams could be exposed via a
> file-as-directory model.  In that case what windows sees as
> foo.txt:icon would be accessed as foo.txt/icon instead.  The question
> in my mind is if that is a desirable concept.  I can see that it is
> very a attractive concept because it's easy to explain to users, but
> at the same time, a lot of things suggest that the files-as-
> directories concept is a bad idea.  I mentioned a few of the possible
> problems in the grand-grand-parent of this message.
>
> Try to address those problems.  It may be that your answer is "I don't
> give a shit about existing backup applications", or "I don't care
> about security in existing web-servers, they'll have to be taught
> about reiser4", but in that case say so.  Or show how it's not a
> problem with existing applictions.
>
>> It is always better to lead by example.  These ideas are too new for
>> the other fs developers, they need 5 years to get used to them.
>> Reiser4 should create something that works, and let others follow when
>> they will.
>
> Pretty please, give up the marketing bullshit.  I already know that
> you belive reiser4 is the best thing since sliced bread.  You say that
> "reiser4 should create something that works".  So far you haven't
> convinced me that reiser4 actually "works".  It's a nice proof of
> concept, but it definitely does not feel like something that I'd like
> in the mainstream kernel until those problems are addressed.
>
> Have you looked at the VFS deadlocks that Alexander Viro pointed at?
>
> Does tar work with files-as-directories?  Can I use tar to make a
> backup of my resier4 directory.  What changes would be required to the
> tar application or to the tar file format to make this work?
>
> Can I do a cp -a /home/wingel to a NFS-mounted drive on some other
> computer to make a backup of my home directory or will I lose data
> that way?  What changes would be required to cp to make this work?
>
> Please remember that reiser4 does not exist in a vaccum.  If you want
> to make a fundamental change to unix concepts that have been with us
> for three decades, it's really up to you to show that it doesn't break
> too many existing applications.
>
>> This is the wrong question.  The right question is, what belongs in a
>> unified namespace?  Then having answered that, the extent to which it
>> is easier to have all aspects of name resolution together in one body
>> of code is an implementation detail that can change and evolve with
>> time.  A rapidly evolving namespace is easier to modify if it is all
>> one body of code.  Furthermore, the people doing the work should
>> really be left to decide such implementation details themselves
>> because they are more expert on their code than anyone else.
>
> I still haven't seen a good answer to the namespace problem.  You say
> that files-as-directories is great, I'm definitely not convinced.
>
> The VFS is the body of code that handles most aspects of name
> resolution today, so it sounds as if reiser4 is supposed to be the new
> super-VFS, and you want to keep it that way and do not want to
> integrate with the current VFS.  In that case resier4 really does not
> belong in the mainstream kernel since it's your pet research project.
>
>  /Christer
>
> --
> "Just how much can I get away with and still go to heaven?"
>
> Freelance consultant specializing in device driver programming for Linux
> Christer Weinigel <christer@weinigel.se>  http://www.weinigel.se
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