Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2004 16:24:48 +0100
From: viro@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk
To: Greg KH <greg@kroah.com>
Cc: Maneesh Soni <maneesh@in.ibm.com>, LKML <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [RFC] fix sysfs symlinks
Message-ID: <20040416152448.GF24997@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk>
References: <20040413124037.GA21637@in.ibm.com> <20040413133615.GZ31500@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk> <20040415220232.GC23039@kroah.com>
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On Thu, Apr 15, 2004 at 03:02:32PM -0700, Greg KH wrote:
> No, we don't want that.  It's ok to have a dangling symlink in the fs if
> the device the link was pointing to is now gone.  All of the struct
> class_device stuff relies on the fact that a struct device can go away
> at any time, and nothing bad will happen (with the exception of a stale
> symlink.)
> 
> Yeah, it can cause a few odd looking trees when you unplug and replug a
> device a bunch of times, all the while grabbing a reference to the class
> device, but once everything is released by the user, it is cleaned up
> properly, with no harm done to anything.

Except that these "symlinks" are expected to follow the target upon
renames.  Which means that we either need a very messy scanning of
the entire tree on every rename (obviously not feasible) or we need
to store pointer to target and regenerate the path.  Which, in turn,
requires holding a reference.
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