Re: FS callback routines

[Daniel Phillips <phillips@innominate.de>]

Jamie Lokier wrote:
> Daniel Phillips wrote:
> > [things that can benefit from dnotify]
> > locate (reindex only those directories that have changed, keep index
> > database current).
> 
> Not a chance.  dnotify doesn't work recursively, so you can't monitor
> just a few top level directories like "/usr/lib".  And have you ever
> tried to keep all 3000 directories on your filesystem directories open
> at the same time?  Would you want to consume that much non-swappable
> memory, and also prevent the directories from being removed from the
> filesystem?
> 
> Long ago I proposed something similar that works at the disk level, is
> recursive, and the checks can be done without keeping directories open.
> But I never wrote the code :(  That's interesting because it speeds up
> make without needing a daemon, and really can speed up
> locate/updatedb/find.

It took a little while for the following to dawn on me: it's not hard to
make the dnotify scheme work recursively and you don't have to keep 3000
directories open.  To modify a file you must have opened all the
directories in its path.  We need a new event: 

        DN_OPEN       A file in the directory was opened

You open the top level directory and register for events.  When somebody
opens a subdirectory of the top level directory, you receive
notification and register for events on the subdirectory, and so on,
down to the file that is actually modified.

--
Daniel
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