Re: [PATCH] cowlinks v2

Jamie Lokier
2004-03-28T12:22:53Z

Eric W. Biederman wrote:
> > The addictive thing about the prototype implementation was that you
> > could do ``ln --cow / /some/other/directory'' and you would have an
> > atomic snapshot of your filesystem. Definitely not a feature for the
> > first implementation but certainly something to dream about.
>
> Addictive but broken by design. If any of the files inside your
> directory tree have hard links outside of the tree there is no way
> short of recursing through all of the subdirectories directories to
> tell if a given inode has is in use. Except in the special case
> where you are taking a cow copy of the entire filesystem. At which
> point a magic mount option is likely a better interface.

I don't understand this explanation. Can you explain again? What is
the problem with inodes being in use?

-- Jamie