Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261635AbUC1MWx (ORCPT ); Sun, 28 Mar 2004 07:22:53 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261654AbUC1MWx (ORCPT ); Sun, 28 Mar 2004 07:22:53 -0500 Received: from mail.shareable.org ([81.29.64.88]:50578 "EHLO mail.shareable.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261635AbUC1MWv (ORCPT ); Sun, 28 Mar 2004 07:22:51 -0500 Date: Sun, 28 Mar 2004 13:22:42 +0100 From: Jamie Lokier To: "Eric W. Biederman" Cc: =?iso-8859-1?Q?J=F6rn?= Engel , Davide Libenzi , "Patrick J. LoPresti" , Linux Kernel Mailing List Subject: Re: [PATCH] cowlinks v2 Message-ID: <20040328122242.GB32296@mail.shareable.org> References: <20040325174942.GC11236@mail.shareable.org> <20040325194303.GE11236@mail.shareable.org> <20040327102828.GA21884@mail.shareable.org> <20040327214238.GA23893@mail.shareable.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.1i Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1076 Lines: 22 Eric W. Biederman wrote: > > The addictive thing about the prototype implementation was that you > > could do ``ln --cow / /some/other/directory'' and you would have an > > atomic snapshot of your filesystem. Definitely not a feature for the > > first implementation but certainly something to dream about. > > Addictive but broken by design. If any of the files inside your > directory tree have hard links outside of the tree there is no way > short of recursing through all of the subdirectories directories to > tell if a given inode has is in use. Except in the special case > where you are taking a cow copy of the entire filesystem. At which > point a magic mount option is likely a better interface. I don't understand this explanation. Can you explain again? What is the problem with inodes being in use? -- Jamie - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/