file metadata via fs API (was: [GIT PULL] Filesystem Information)

[Miklos Szeredi]

On Wed, Aug 12, 2020 at 6:33 PM Al Viro <viro at zeniv.linux.org.uk> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Aug 12, 2020 at 05:13:14PM +0200, Miklos Szeredi wrote:

> > Why does it have to have a struct mount?  It does not have to use
> > dentry/mount based path lookup.
>
> What the fuck?  So we suddenly get an additional class of objects
> serving as kinda-sorta analogues of dentries *AND* now struct file
> might refer to that instead of a dentry/mount pair - all on the VFS
> level?  And so do all the syscalls you want to allow for such "pathnames"?

The only syscall I'd want to allow is open, everything else would be
on the open files themselves.

file->f_path can refer to an anon mount/inode, the real object is
referred to by file->private_data.

The change to namei.c would be on the order of ~10 lines.  No other
parts of the VFS would be affected.   Maybe I'm optimistic; we'll
see...

Now off to something completely different.  Back on Tuesday.

Thanks,
Miklos