Miklos Szeredi: > One issue, though, is that stat("x") and fd=open("x"); fstat(fd) will > return different file stats (the fstat one will return the stats for > the original file). This may confuse some apps. > > This is a something a "true" union filesystem can do better that > union-mounts or overlayfs. Exactly. That was one example I picked up and posted when I read overlayfs years ago. Recently I named it "name-based union". Of course AUFS is "inode-based union." stat(2) operates upon a filename while fstat(2) operates upon a file descriptor. Overlayfs (and probably UnionMount too) may return different info for these two systemcalls even when they should be equal. All the inode-based (or file descriptor based) operations can confuse users in overlayfs, I am afraid. I was looking forward to see how overlayfs solve this problem. Overriding uid/gid is an idea, but obviously it will not match using with system dirs such as /bin and /usr, since they often have suid binaries. So it will be used only for user dirs which is unioned as lower RO layer. It might be better to implement such feature into your lower FS (or generic VFS feature) instead of overlayfs. If I remember correctly, some non-unix FS such as VFAT already have such feature. J. R. Okajima -- 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