Re: [RFC][PATCH] inotify 0.10.0

[John McCutchan <ttb@tentacle.dhs.org>]

On Tue, 2004-09-28 at 01:45, Ray Lee wrote:
> On Mon, 2004-09-27 at 16:52 -0400, Robert Love wrote:
> > > > +struct inotify_event {
> > > > +	int wd;
> > > > +	int mask;
> > > > +	int cookie;
> > > > +	char filename[INOTIFY_FILENAME_MAX];
> > > > +};
> > > 
> > > yeah, that's not very nice.  Better to kmalloc the pathname.
> > 
> > That is the structure that we communicate with to user-space.
> > 
> > We could kmalloc() filename, but it makes the user-space use a bit more
> > complicated (and right now it is trivial and wonderfully simple).
> > 
> > We've been debating the pros and cons.
> 
> The current way pads out the structure unnecessarily, and still doesn't
> handle the really long filenames, by your admission. It incurs extra
> syscalls, as few filenames are really 256 characters in length. It makes
> userspace double-check whether the filename extends all the way to the
> boundary of the structure, and if so, then go back to the disk to try to
> guess what the kernel really meant to say.

I thought that filenames where limited to 256 characters? That was the
idea behind the 256 character limit.

John