From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Mon, 20 May 2002 20:46:52 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Mon, 20 May 2002 20:46:51 -0400 Received: from server0043.freedom2surf.net ([194.106.33.53]:11463 "EHLO server0043.freedom2surf.net") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Mon, 20 May 2002 20:46:50 -0400 Date: Tue, 21 May 2002 01:55:17 +0100 From: Ian Molton To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: RFC - named loop devices... Message-Id: <20020521015517.609d5516.spyro@armlinux.org> Organization: The Dragon Roost X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 0.7.6 (GTK+ 1.2.10; ) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org I havent thought about this too much, but... When /etc/mtab is a symlink to /proc/mounts the umount command will fail to unmount loopback mounted filesystems properly. I was wondering if a solution to this would be to introduce 'named' loopback devices. with named loop devices, umount will then know that mount was the creator of a loopback device that it mounted, and can safely destroy it. at present, mounting and unmounting disc images causes one to run out of loopback devices rather rapidly. If I were to knock up a patch to implement named loop devices, would it stand a chance of being accepted? also, how should this work? should the name be that of the creating process or should it just be a field that the creator can fill in as it pleases?