On Mon, Apr 29, 2013 at 12:35:18PM -0600, Andreas Dilger wrote: > > One real problem that I see is that EXT4_REPLICA_INO uses the > last reserved inode. I recall in the past that Ted wanted to > make this last reserved inode a hidden directory, so that it > would be possible to put special inodes in there and access them > by name. Not quite as easy as accessing a reserved inode by > number, but still preferable to not being able to have filesystem > internal inodes at all in the future. That wasn't my idea, but it's not a bad one. I'm not too worried about running out of file system internal inodes, though. There are two main benefits of having special inode numbers. First, it's a low numbered inode, so it's easy to recognize. Second, it's easier to add a new file system feature to an existing file system. But either way, it's not impossible. First of all, "the first non-reserved inode" is actually a superblock field, so we could actually change that for newer file systems, and hence effectively create new reserved inodes. Secondly, it's simple enough just to use a superblock field to designate a particular inode as being special. This is how we originally dealt with the journal inode, after all. Cheers, - Ted -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-ext4" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
