Re: udev and devfs - The final word

[Jeremy Maitin-Shepard]

viro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:

> On Sun, Jan 04, 2004 at 08:43:27PM -0500, Jeremy Maitin-Shepard wrote:
>> Unfortunately, programs such as tar depend on inode numbers of distinct
>> files being distinct even when the file is not open over a period of
>> several minutes/seconds.  This is needed to avoid dumping hard links
>> more than once.  Furthermore, there is no efficient way to write
>> programs such as tar without depending on this capability.  Thus, if
>> st_ino cannot be used reliably for this purpose, it would be useful for
>> there to be a system call for retrieving a true
>> unique-within-the-filesystem identifier for the file.

> No such thing.  It's not the matter of having a syscall to extract such
> identifier - it's that on a lot of filesystems (including many common Unix
> ones) there's nothing that would qualify.

Even if the files in question aren't being modified, created, deleted,
etc.?  Even if nothing on the filesystem is being modified, created,
deleted, etc.?

> [snip]

-- 
Jeremy Maitin-Shepard
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