Return-Path: Received: from smtp1.linux-foundation.org ([140.211.169.13]:58344 "EHLO smtp1.linux-foundation.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932452Ab0GSRrd convert rfc822-to-8bit (ORCPT ); Mon, 19 Jul 2010 13:47:33 -0400 In-Reply-To: <11817.1279560400@redhat.com> References: <20100715021709.5544.64506.stgit@warthog.procyon.org.uk> <20100715021712.5544.44845.stgit@warthog.procyon.org.uk> <10783.1279556132@redhat.com> <11817.1279560400@redhat.com> Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2010 10:46:55 -0700 Message-ID: Subject: Re: [PATCH 02/18] xstat: Add a pair of system calls to make extended file stats available [ver #6] From: Linus Torvalds To: David Howells Cc: viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, linux-nfs@vger.kernel.org, linux-cifs@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, samba-technical@lists.samba.org, linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Sender: linux-nfs-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 10:26 AM, David Howells wrote: > >> Ask your samba people, for example, if they'd _ever_ do just a "xstat()"? > > I suspect they would, though maybe they can say otherwise. ?What about SMB > directory enumeration? ?I believe that is effectively getdents-with-stat. > Having to do open+stat for each file for that would be painful. Yeah, but do you need xstat information at all for something like that? Most people try very hard to make do with the information returned by readdir itself (d_type and inode number), because if you end up looking up each name you've already pretty much lost in a performance model. (And I do agree that a "readdirplus()" is probably something that a lot of server people would find useful, but obviously that's another cross-filesystem nightmare. Only a few filesystems can cheaply give you anything but d_type/d_ino, and not all do even that), Linus