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

[Jeff Moyer <jmoyer@redhat.com>]

Ian Kent <raven@themaw.net> writes:
>
> I still need to deal with the autofs module.
>
> I'm reluctant to remove it and do the rename at the same time the other
> changes are going in.
>
> I thought a better idea would be to leave the autofs module in place for
> the moment and change the Kconfig help message to describe what is going
> to happen and alert users to the fact it won't work and also change all
> the defconfig files that select autofs to select autofs4.
>
> Thoughts please?

I think it's safe to remove fs/autofs.  There's no sense in keeping
around code that doesn't work, and we don't really fix bugs in autofs3
anyway.  Heck, when was the last time you got a bug report for it?  I
haven't seen one in probably 5 years!

I'm not so sure what the implications are of renaming autofs4 to autofs.
At the very least, the autofs init script itself tries to load the
autofs4 kernel module.  This would cause issues when updating a kernel,
so it sounds like a bad idea to me.  If there was a module alias causing
autofs to load when autofs4 is requested on newer kernels, I guess that
would be okay.  But I think that sort of thing is managed by the
userspace configuration.  The other option, then, is to ship an autofs
with an init script that knows which module to load.  Then, after that's
been in the wild for some time (a year?), make the switch.

These sorts of things are always painful.

Cheers,
Jeff