lkml.org 
[lkml]   [2000]   [Aug]   [12]   [last100]   RSS Feed
Views: [wrap][no wrap]   [headers]  [forward] 
 
Messages in this thread
    /
    Date
    From
    SubjectRe: NTFS-like streams?


    On Sat, 12 Aug 2000, Linus Torvalds wrote:

    > That said, we obviously _can_ handle it - it's very similar to the
    > loop-mount issue, after all. In many ways you could think of any complex
    > object as a "mount-point" for the complex behaviour, and that should
    > take care of most issues. It certainly takes care of the multi-link issue.

    Umm... /me scratches head. /me silently suspects that internally these
    "hardlinks" are implemented in rather funny ways. /me wants to know how
    the green fsck does CHKDSK react on them and what actually happens.

    > The complex object just becomes a "mini-filesystem within a filesystem",
    > in fact. Which is conceptually right: the actual behaviour of that
    > embedded filesystem is not necessarily at all as complex as the behaviour
    > of the "full" filesystem.
    >
    > (And if you think of complex objects this way all the issues with renaming
    > outside the object just go away entirely, as it turns into the standard
    > case of renaming on a different filesystem - which simply does not work).

    *bingo*
    That's what I was proposing.

    > The same thing can be conceptually used to create that wet dream of user
    > mounts: going "inside" tar-files by just mounting them as a
    > mini-filesystem on top of the file that is the tar archive. The strongest
    > argument against that is probably the fact that "tar" is not that great a
    > filesystem format ;)
    >
    > However, the "filesystem within a filesystem" approach certainly would
    > require more VFS layer tinkering to get right. It might be a very
    > successful approach, though.

    It takes _less_. Linus, the only (and I mean it) issue is that we will
    need to lift the 255-anon-mounts limit. The only problem I have with
    podfuk and friends is their attempt to make mounting automatic ("you've
    looked funny at foo.tar, we mount it"). If application says "I want to
    treat foo.tar as tarfs" (not necessary doing the actual mounting; autofs-like
    scheme will work fine) - no problem. And yes, that's a hell of a powerful
    thing. Potentially there is a file-becoming-directory thing (confused
    userland), but that may be worth saying "fix your userland, then" - amount
    of breakage is probably limited.


    -
    To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
    the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
    Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/

    \
     
     \ /
      Last update: 2005-03-22 13:58    [W:2.352 / U:0.016 seconds]
    ©2003-2020 Jasper Spaans|hosted at Digital Ocean and TransIP|Read the blog|Advertise on this site