Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1753531AbZIKLrs (ORCPT ); Fri, 11 Sep 2009 07:47:48 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1753276AbZIKLrs (ORCPT ); Fri, 11 Sep 2009 07:47:48 -0400 Received: from averell.mail.tiscali.it ([213.205.33.55]:46521 "EHLO averell.mail.tiscali.it" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752835AbZIKLrr convert rfc822-to-8bit (ORCPT ); Fri, 11 Sep 2009 07:47:47 -0400 X-Greylist: delayed 484 seconds by postgrey-1.27 at vger.kernel.org; Fri, 11 Sep 2009 07:47:47 EDT From: Giuseppe Scrivano To: Eric Paris Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, bug-coreutils@gnu.org Subject: Re: extend inotify to support file descriptors in addition to paths References: <87fxaxvuh6.fsf@master.homenet> <7e0fb38c0909100727t51d3d523o403e05a225881403@mail.gmail.com> Date: Fri, 11 Sep 2009 13:39:38 +0200 In-Reply-To: <7e0fb38c0909100727t51d3d523o403e05a225881403@mail.gmail.com> (Eric Paris's message of "Thu, 10 Sep 2009 10:27:25 -0400") Message-ID: <87k505bthh.fsf@master.homenet> User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.1.50 (gnu/linux) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8BIT Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1735 Lines: 36 Eric Paris writes: > On Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 8:21 PM, Giuseppe Scrivano wrote: > >> at the moment inotify permits to add new files to be watched using their >> path.  There are situations where the file path is not know but a >> descriptor is available.  It would be desiderable to have the >> possibility to use the inotify system even in these (rare) cases. > > I don't think specifying the inode in question by fd is fundamentally > a bad idea. It is the reason I decided to use fd's when registering > event's in the upcoming fanotify rather than pathnames. I do however > question if we really want to add yet another syscall for inotify. > We've already seen that inotify is very hard to expand. The fixed > message length, lack of information a number of users want, and > difficultly in extending those things make me reticent to support more > extentions. > Personally I'd rather see us/you move to fanotify which is (I hope) > extensible forever. If only I could get networking people to review > it. Have you looked at fanotify? I'm going to repost the series in a > couple minutes, maybe you could tell me if fanotify might work for > you? Sure, I'll take a look at it. I have few questions before look at details: is it an attempt to replace inotify? Does fanotify use only fd? Have the possibility to watch a file by its path, like inotify does, is not a bad idea when the file is not already opened. Thanks, Giuseppe -- 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/