Re: knfsd and system crashes

Martin von Loewis (martin@mira.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de)
Sun, 16 Nov 1997 11:41:32 +0100

> The problem is that I need a dentry (i.e. a path) in order to use the
> file in the filehandle. Getting the inode from iget() is no problem, but
> unless I've overlooked something major, I don't see how this helps get
> the path.

Hi Bill,

This indicates a design flaw in the dentry approach. Searching the
entire volume just because our in-memory data structures are not
appropriate sounds broken.

Some file systems (e.g. NTFS) can reconstruct the paths of a file when
given the inode number. So maybe we add this capability in the VFS
layer, and use it if present.

For the other file systems: Why do we need the entire dentry chain?
Can't we just make up a dentry with a synthetic path name, perhaps
dropping that one if a true name is discovered?

Regards,
Martin