Re: Should struct inode be made available to userspace?

From: viro
Date: Sat Jan 03 2004 - 13:58:37 EST


On Sat, Jan 03, 2004 at 01:39:41PM -0500, Bill Davidsen wrote:
> viro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>
> >struct inode and structures containing it should not be used outside of
> >kernel.
> >Moreover, foo_fs.h should be seriously trimmed down and everything _not_
> >useful outside of kernel should be taken into fs/foo/*; other kernel code
> >also doesn't give a fsck for that stuff, so it should be private to
> >filesystem
> >instead of polluting include/linux/*.
>
> Moving the definitions is fine, but some user programs, like backup
> programs, do benefit from direct interpretation of the inode. Clearly
> that's not a normal user program, but this information is not only
> useful inside the kernel.

No, they do not. They care about on-disk structures, not the in-core
ones fs driver happens to build.
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