From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1755444AbZHYR25 (ORCPT ); Tue, 25 Aug 2009 13:28:57 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1755347AbZHYR25 (ORCPT ); Tue, 25 Aug 2009 13:28:57 -0400 Received: from mx1.redhat.com ([209.132.183.28]:57464 "EHLO mx1.redhat.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1755266AbZHYR24 (ORCPT ); Tue, 25 Aug 2009 13:28:56 -0400 Message-ID: <4A941F56.8060502@redhat.com> Date: Tue, 25 Aug 2009 13:28:54 -0400 From: Rik van Riel Organization: Red Hat, Inc User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.17 (X11/20080915) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Jeff Shanab CC: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Starting a grad project that may change kernel VFS. Early research Re: Starting a grad project that may change kernel VFS. Early research References: <4A93428A.4070903@earthlink.net> In-Reply-To: <4A93428A.4070903@earthlink.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Jeff Shanab wrote: > Updates start at the file and only work upwards back to root. How does > the hardlink get traversed? A hard link is just a second directory entry linking to the same inode. There are no back links from inodes to the directory entries that point to them and they are essentially indistinguishable from files that are not hardlinked. Hard links have been done like this in pretty much every Unix filesystem since the 1970's. -- All rights reversed.