Re: [patch 6/8] inode-diet: Move i_cindex from struct inode to struct file

From: Theodore Tso
Date: Mon Jul 03 2006 - 10:04:38 EST


On Mon, Jul 03, 2006 at 10:05:32AM +0100, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 02, 2006 at 08:53:39PM -0400, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
> > inode.i_cindex isn't initialized until the character device is opened
> > anyway, and there are far more struct inodes in memory than there are
> > struct file. So move the cindex field to file.f_cindex, and change
> > the one(!) user of cindex to use file pointer, which is in fact simpler.
>
> I think you got a pretty clear NACK from Al on this one.
>

I explained my reasoning to him --- that inode.i_cindex isn't
initialized until after the VFS-specific char-open is called, so you
can never depend on index.i_cindex being valid except in char device
driver's open method --- and that function gets passed a file pointer
as well as an index pointer. So the clean up that Al wants to do can
just as easily be done by having the device drivers use file->f_cindex
instead of inode->i_cindex.

- Ted
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