Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2009 08:45:42 +0100
From: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
To: Jeff Garzik <jeff@garzik.org>
Cc: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@infradead.org>,
       Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
       linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>,
       Al Viro <viro@ZenIV.linux.org.uk>,
       Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@gmail.com>, auke-jan.h.kok@intel.com
Subject: Re: [PATCH] vfs: Add a trace point in the mark_inode_dirty function
Message-ID: <20091111074542.GB25132@elte.hu>
References: <20091025225342.007138f5@infradead.org>
 <20091111020108.GA11423@localhost>
 <20091110223456.01ef355f@infradead.org>
 <4AFA6AEF.5060306@garzik.org>
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* Jeff Garzik <jeff@garzik.org> wrote:

> On 11/11/2009 01:34 AM, Arjan van de Ven wrote:
> >Wu Fengguang<fengguang.wu@intel.com>  wrote:
> >>Maybe this is enough for POWERTOP, however for general use, the dirty
> >>type(data/metadata) and inode number may be valuable to some users?
> >
> >what can a user do with an inode number????
> 
> Inode numbers have always been visible to userspace...  IIRC, tar(1) 
> uses the st_ino member of struct stat to detect hard links in certain 
> cases.  ls(1) displays inode numbers with -i, find(1) looks for them 
> with -inum, ...

Without an inode->vfs-name lookup/matching service it's of limited 
utility though to developers and users. So inode numbers are fine (as 
nicely unique physical identifiers)- as long as corresponding vfs name 
string is available too.

	Ingo
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