Re: If not readdir() then what?

From: H. Peter Anvin
Date: Tue Apr 10 2007 - 17:17:49 EST


Neil Brown wrote:
On Tuesday April 10, trond.myklebust@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
The problem is that it is extremely hard to come up with an alternative
that doesn't impose new conditions on what filesystems you can support.

I seem to remember Hans Reiser making a credible suggestion years ago
when NFSv4 was still in draft. It didn't fly, but I don't really
remember why.

The NFS server gets to either return a cookie like it currently does,
or sets a flag (or maybe returns a special cookie) which says 'just
use the name'.
A READDIR request contains either a cookie or a filename. Either mean
"This identifies the last name I got from you, give me the next one".

Is there something that makes that interface problematic?

Seems like it would simply make more sense for the server to be allowed to determine what the size of the cookie should be.

Of course, that doesn't help NFSv2/3/4.0.

-hpa
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