Re: The argument for fs assistance in handling archives (was: silent semantic changes with reiser4)

Stephen Rothwell
2004-09-05T07:27:51Z

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On Thu, 2 Sep 2004 13:22:41 -0700 (PDT) Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org> wrote:
>
> Well, dnotify() really _is_ inotify(), since it does actually work on
> inodes, not dentries.

The "d" stands for directory not dentry :-)

> I think what they are really complaining about is that dnotify() only
> notifies the _directory_ when a file is changed, and they'd like it to
> notify the file itself too. Which is a one-liner, really.

I don't think so, since this notify will only happen if the process has
registered for the notification and there is no way to register unless the
file is a directory ...

> Does the following make sense? (Totally untested, use-at-your-own-risk,
> I've-never-actually-used-dnotify-in-user-space, whatever).

I had intended to extend dnotify to do file notifies, but I think the
real killer is needing the keep the file open that you want to be
notified about when you want to be notified about lots of files ...

I think that is what inotify was trying to fix (but I haven't had a chance
to look at it recently). It reminds me of omirr that we had many years
ago - I wonder what happened to it?

--
Cheers,
Stephen Rothwell sfr@canb.auug.org.au
http://www.canb.auug.org.au/~sfr/

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