Re: reiser4 plugins

Horst von Brand
2005-07-12T03:34:10Z

David Masover <ninja@slaphack.com> wrote:

[...]

> Both camps seem to want to allow easy access to the metadata of a
> file, whether we're given that file as an inode or as a pathname.
> That's why I suggested /meta/vfs and /meta/inode -- sometimes I want
> to look up a file by name, and sometimes by inode, but either way, I
> should be able to get its metadata.

You should /never/ give access just by inode, as that makes it very easy to
bypass security given by directory permissions.

> > I mean, editing something is easy and you don't have to "know" how
> > to navigate /meta

> But then you have to "know" how to navigate .meta, and more
> importantly, how to find .meta

And what the heck the format of the metadata is today/for this particular
file.

[...]

> Either way, the major challenge to this method is not so much whether
> it'd work, but how to choose a suitable delimiter? The delimiter must
> be standard if we're going to have apps develop for it, and it must
> not be used in the name of any existing file or directory.

The only characters that aren't used in filenames today are '/' and '\0'.

> I had a long essay here on how '.meta' breaks every recursive
> operation on directories (rm -rf, tar, mkisofs), but I deleted it when
> I remembered that I played around with the alpha/beta reiser4 which
> had a 'metas' dir that did the same thing, but was hidden from the
> normal directory listing. 'cd metas' worked, 'ls metas' worked, but
> 'ls' showed no directory called 'metas'.

And if I try to create a file or directory called metas?

> I don't *think* there are any apps that will break if you tell them to
> open a path that doesn't exist in a directory listing. That is,
> typing 'vim /home/metas/acl' should always let me edit the acl on
> /home, and vim should never complain about how /home/metas doesn't
> show up in /home. A program would have to be pretty retarded to fail
> on something like that.

Think a GUI that reads the directory to find out what is available and
present them as icons for mousing around. Then there is no way to futz
around with your metadata.

Think filename completion, bash style. No, not just bash uses this.
--
Dr. Horst H. von Brand User #22616 counter.li.org
Departamento de Informatica Fono: +56 32 654431
Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria +56 32 654239
Casilla 110-V, Valparaiso, Chile Fax: +56 32 797513