Message-ID: <4182B2FF.9040902@namesys.com>
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 14:15:43 -0700
From: Hans Reiser <reiser@namesys.com>
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To: Andreas Dilger <adilger@clusterfs.com>
CC: "Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>, Timo Sirainen <tss@iki.fi>,
       linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: readdir loses renamed files
References: <431547F9-2624-11D9-8AC3-000393CC2E90@iki.fi> <20041025123722.GA5107@thunk.org> <20041028093426.GB15050@merlin.emma.line.org> <20041028114413.GL1343@schnapps.adilger.int>
In-Reply-To: <20041028114413.GL1343@schnapps.adilger.int>
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Andreas Dilger wrote:

>On Oct 28, 2004  11:34 +0200, Matthias Andree wrote:
>  
>
>>On Mon, 25 Oct 2004, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>And that's because there's no good way to do this without trashing the
>>>performance of the system, especially when most applications don't
>>>care.  (Do you really want your entire system running significantly
>>>slower, penalizing all other applications on your system, just because
>>>of one stupid/badly-written application?)
>>>      
>>>
>>Please - is it really necessary that application writers are offended in
>>this way? Timo is investing enormous time and effort in writing a *good*
>>application, and he's effectively seeking a way to *robustly* deal with
>>Maildir format mail storage. Please leave it at "readdir/getdents don't
>>work the way you expect and cannot for this and that reason."
>>
>>Timo tries to implement a *robust* Maildir reader and has just bumped
>>into the flaws of DJB's "no-locking" store.
>>
>>Yes, it's a mail server again that poses file system questions on this
>>list; only it's IMAP this time rather than SMTP and directory
>>synchronous I/O...
>>    
>>
Matthias is right.  readdir is badly architected, and no one has fixed 
it for ~30 years.

It should be possible to perform an atomic readdir if that is what you 
want to do and if you have space in your process to stuff the result.

Hans
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