On Thu, 17 Jun 2010, Valerie Aurora wrote: > On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 10:01:30AM +0200, Alex Riesen wrote: > > On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 20:39, Valerie Aurora <vaurora@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > +git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/fs/ext2/val/e2fsprogs.git > > > + > > > +Currently, whiteout directory entries are not returned to userland. > > > +While the directory type for whiteouts, DT_WHT, has been defined for > > > +many years, very little userland code handles them. ??Userland will > > > +never see fallthru directory entries. > > > > This may be a dumb question (I must admit I did only very little research), > > but how does one cleanup the topmost layer of whiteouts and fallthroughs, > > so that the entries of lower layer(s) can be made visible again? > > I'm not sure how best to do this. We don't want to add more system > calls. One thought of mine has been to do this offline, when the file > system is unmounted. For example, e2fsck could add a feature to > delete whiteouts and fallthrus. Another option is to add a flag to an > existing system call. One more advantage of doing whiteouts, etc. with hard links and extended attributes instead of as special filesystem objects. That way they are visible (unless part of a union) and can be treated as normal filesystem objects. Miklos -- 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
