Re: Generation numbers in stat was Re: what is slashdot's answer to ZFS?

[Chris Adams]

Once upon a time, Andi Kleen <ak@xxxxxxx> said:
> Chris Adams <cmadams@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> >   [Tru64 UNIX]  However, in the rare case when a user application has been
> >   deleting open files, and a file serial number is reused, a third structure
> >   member in <sys/stat.h>, the file generation number, is needed to uniquely
> >   identify a file. This member, st_gen, is used in addition to st_ino and
> >   st_dev.
> 
> Sounds like a cool idea. Many fs already maintain this information
> in the kernel. We still had some unused pad space in the struct stat
> so it could be implemented without any compatibility issues 
> (e.g. in place of __pad0). On old kernels it would be always 0.

Searching around some, I see that OS X has st_gen, but the man page I
found says it is only available for super-user.  It also appears that
AIX and at least some of the BSDs have it (which would make sense I
guess as Tru64, OS X, and IIRC AIX are all BSD derived).

Also, I ses someone pitched it to linux-kernel several years ago but it
didn't appear to go anywhere.  Maybe time to rethink that?
-- 
Chris Adams <cmadams@xxxxxxxxxx>
Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.
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