Subject: [nfsv4] RE: Finding hardlinks

From: "Halevy, Benny" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 Dec 2006 17:50:21 -0500

Bryan Henderson wrote:
> 
>>Adding a vfs call to check for file equivalence seems like a good idea to 
me.
>
>That would be only barely useful.  It would let 'diff' say, "those are 
>both the same file," but wouldn't be useful for something trying to 
>duplicate a filesystem (e.g. a backup program).  Such a program can't do 
>the comparison between every possible pairing of file names.

Gnu tar, for example, remembers and matches <st_dev, st_ino> only for
potential hard links (st_nlink > 1).
My thinking was that the application will call the equivalence syscall
to verify a match on the inode number (and when nlink > 1), not for every
pair of files in the filesystem.

>
>I'd rather just see a unique file identifier that's as big as it needs to 
>be.  And the more unique the better.  (There are lots of degrees of 
>uniqueness; unique as long as the files exist; as long as the filesystems 
>are mounted, etc.).
>
>--
>Bryan Henderson                     IBM Almaden Research Center
>San Jose CA                         Filesystems
>

_______________________________________________
nfsv4 mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/nfsv4