Re: Overlay filesystem

From: Alexander Viro (viro@math.psu.edu)
Date: Wed Apr 19 2000 - 07:20:26 EST


On Wed, 19 Apr 2000, Pavel Machek wrote:

> Hi!
>
> In 2.3.99-pre3 and less, I had patch which redirected all accesses to
> nonexistant files into /overlay filesystem. It is handy for stuff like
> transparent decompression of .gz files or entering of .tar.gz archives
> with simple cd.
>
> Question is: is there simple way to do this with "new" vfs, or should
> I just try to redo stuff I did for 2.3.99-pre3?
>
> Pavel
>
> Old patch looked like this:

[snip]

Ouch. Pavel, it's just completely wrong. First of all, no_file() is
bogus wrt symlinks. Moreover, it imposes a lot of overhead on _every_
mkdir()/creat()/mknod()/symlink()/link(). BTW, in the 'nonclean' variant
it messes with CVS, pine, whatnot.

What are you using it for? I _seriously_ suspect that there are better
ways to achieve the effect you actually need. Care to describe?

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