Re: Suggested changes to the VFS
H. Peter Anvin (hpa@transmeta.com)
Tue, 24 Mar 1998 12:57:01 -0800 (PST)
> There are two parts to the open process. Getting the dentry and inode
> with lookup, which can do everything you want. And opening a file
> descriptor, which provides a nice handle for the file. The later case
> is what open is for.
>
> Currently I use open to reserve storage via struct file f_private_data
> to hold my place (in non-linear directory files). And release is what
> I use to release that storage.
>
> HA> Incidentally, open is defined as a file_operation, which IMO
> HA> is bogus, since you can only open() an inode, and the open
> HA> function is passed an inode anyway. It would appear more
> HA> logical to me to move open to the inode_operations structure.
>
> Perhaps it's the name that's bogus and misleading?
No, I don't think so. Your message doesn't really parse to me, so
maybe I'm misunderstanding, but it seems very weird that open() is
considered a file descriptor operation when it is fundamentally a
constructor for a file descriptor. Incidentally, open() *always* gets
its file descriptor operation from the inode operations immediately
before calling it.
I think open should be allowed to return a reference to an already
existing file descriptor if it wants to; it doesn't seem that major of
a change if a canned routine is provided to do what the pre-open
initialization code does.
-hpa
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