Re: udev and devfs - The final word

Jeremy Maitin-Shepard
2004-01-05T02:09:45Z

viro@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk writes:

> On Sun, Jan 04, 2004 at 08:43:27PM -0500, Jeremy Maitin-Shepard wrote:
>> Unfortunately, programs such as tar depend on inode numbers of distinct
>> files being distinct even when the file is not open over a period of
>> several minutes/seconds. This is needed to avoid dumping hard links
>> more than once. Furthermore, there is no efficient way to write
>> programs such as tar without depending on this capability. Thus, if
>> st_ino cannot be used reliably for this purpose, it would be useful for
>> there to be a system call for retrieving a true
>> unique-within-the-filesystem identifier for the file.

> No such thing. It's not the matter of having a syscall to extract such
> identifier - it's that on a lot of filesystems (including many common Unix
> ones) there's nothing that would qualify.

Even if the files in question aren't being modified, created, deleted,
etc.? Even if nothing on the filesystem is being modified, created,
deleted, etc.?

> [snip]

--
Jeremy Maitin-Shepard