Re: [RFC PATCH] file as directory

From: Miklos Szeredi
Date: Wed May 23 2007 - 06:15:25 EST


> On Wed, May 23, 2007 at 11:03:08AM +0200, Miklos Szeredi wrote:
> > I still don't get it where the superblock comes in. The locking is
> > "interesting" in there, yes. And I haven't completely convinced
> > myself it's right, let alone something that won't easily be screwed up
> > in the future. So there's definitely room for thought there.
> >
> > But how does it matter if two different paths have the same sb or a
> > different sb mounted over them?
>
> Because then you get a slew of fun issues with dropping the final reference
> to vfsmount vs. lookup on another place. What hold do you have on that
> superblock and when do you switch from "oh, called ->enter() on the same
> inode again, return vfsmount over the same superblock" to "need to
> initialize that damn superblock, all mounts are gone"?
>
> > The same dentry is mounted over each one. The contents of the
> > directory should only depend on the contents of the underlying inode.
> > The path leading up to it is completely irrelevant.
>
> So what kind of exclusion do you have for ->enter()? None?
>

So really these issues, are about how do we get hold of the superblock
to mount.

I think that should be a filesystem internal problem, and I suspect
the easiest solution is to just have a permanent meta superblock for
these dir-on-file mounts.

Miklos
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