Re: [PATCH] vfs: Add a trace point in the mark_inode_dirty function

Ingo Molnar
2009-11-11T07:45:55Z

* Jeff Garzik <jeff@garzik.org> wrote:

> On 11/11/2009 01:34 AM, Arjan van de Ven wrote:
> >Wu Fengguang<fengguang.wu@intel.com> wrote:
> >>Maybe this is enough for POWERTOP, however for general use, the dirty
> >>type(data/metadata) and inode number may be valuable to some users?
> >
> >what can a user do with an inode number????
>
> Inode numbers have always been visible to userspace... IIRC, tar(1)
> uses the st_ino member of struct stat to detect hard links in certain
> cases. ls(1) displays inode numbers with -i, find(1) looks for them
> with -inum, ...

Without an inode->vfs-name lookup/matching service it's of limited
utility though to developers and users. So inode numbers are fine (as
nicely unique physical identifiers)- as long as corresponding vfs name
string is available too.

Ingo