Re: [PATCH 0/4] fat: fix ESTALE errors

["J. Bruce Fields" <bfields@fieldses.org>]

On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 01:19:51PM +0900, Namjae Jeon wrote:
> 2012/8/18, OGAWA Hirofumi <hirofumi@mail.parknet.co.jp>:
> > Al Viro <viro@ZenIV.linux.org.uk> writes:
> >
> >> On Sat, Aug 18, 2012 at 05:41:39AM -0400, Namjae Jeon wrote:
> >>> From: Namjae Jeon <namjae.jeon@samsung.com>
> >>>
> >>> This patch-set eliminates the client side ESTALE errors when
> >>> a FAT partition exported over NFS has its dentries evicted
> >>> from the cache.
> >>>
> >>> One of the reasons for this error is lack of permanent inode
> >>> numbers on FAT which makes it difficult to construct persistent
> >>> file handles.This can be overcome by using the on-disk location
> >>> of the directory entries (i_pos) as the inode number.
> >>
> >> The hell it can.  You've just made them unstable on rename(2).
> >
> > As more hint. We can't use i_pos as the inode number.
> >
> > E.g. inode is unlinked but is still opened (orphaned inode), the dir
> > entry is free and you can create the inode on same i_pos. After that,
> > both inodes have same i_pos (so inode number).
> >
> > Thanks.
> Hi. Ogawa.
> Thanks for specific explanation. I will check it.

Fo somebody that knows more about fat than me--is there really any hope
of making it play well with nfs?

--b.