On Wed, Aug 01, 2007 at 02:10:31PM -0500, Dave Kleikamp wrote: > On Wed, 2007-08-01 at 14:44 -0400, Josef Sipek wrote: > > Alright not the greatest of examples, there is something to be said about > > symmetry, so...let me try again :) > > > > /a/ > > /b/bar (whiteout for bar) > > /c/foo/qwerty > > > > Now, let's mount a union of {a,b,c}, and we'll see: > > > > $ find /u > > /u > > /u/foo > > /u/foo/qwerty > > $ mv /u/foo /u/bar > > > > Now what? How do you rename? Do you rename in the same branch (assuming it > > is rw)? > > Er, no. According to Documentation/filesystems/union-mounts.txt, "only > the topmost layer of the mount stack can be altered". This brings up an very interesting (but painful) question...which makes more sense? Allowing the modifications in only the top-most branch, or any branch (given the user allows it at mount-time)? This is really question to the community at large, not just you, Dave :) > > 1) "cp -r" the entire subtree being renamed to highest-priority branch, and > > rename there (you might have to recreate a series of directories to have a > > place to "cp" to...so you got "cp -r" _AND_ "mkdir -p"-like code in the VFS! > > 1/2 a :) ) > > I think this is the only alternative, given the design. Right. Doing something like this at the filesystem level (as we do in unionfs) seems less painful - filesystems are places full of all sorts of nefarious activities to begin with. Having it in the VFS seems...even uglier. Josef 'Jeff' Sipek. -- *NOTE: This message is ROT-13 encrypted twice for extra protection* - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-fsdevel" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html