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

[Linus Torvalds]

On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 5:05 PM David Howells <dhowells at redhat.com> wrote:
>
> Well, the start of it was my proposal of an fsinfo() system call.

Ugh. Ok, it's that thing.

This all seems *WAY* over-designed - both your fsinfo and Miklos' version.

What's wrong with fstatfs()? All the extra magic metadata seems to not
really be anything people really care about.

What people are actually asking for seems to be some unique mount ID,
and we have 16 bytes of spare information in 'struct statfs64'.

All the other fancy fsinfo stuff seems to be "just because", and like
complete overdesign.

Let's not add system calls just because we can.

             Linus