linux-kernel - Re: extend inotify to support file descriptors in addition to paths

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Message-ID: <7e0fb38c0909100727t51d3d523o403e05a225881403@mail.gmail.com>
Date:	Thu, 10 Sep 2009 10:27:25 -0400
From:	Eric Paris <eparis@...isplace.org>
To:	Giuseppe Scrivano <gscrivano@....org>
Cc:	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, bug-coreutils@....org
Subject: Re: extend inotify to support file descriptors in addition to paths

On Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 8:21 PM, Giuseppe Scrivano <gscrivano@....org> wrote:

> at the moment inotify permits to add new files to be watched using their
> path.  There are situations where the file path is not know but a
> descriptor is available.  It would be desiderable to have the
> possibility to use the inotify system even in these (rare) cases.

I don't think specifying the inode in question by fd is fundamentally
a bad idea.  It is the reason I decided to use fd's when registering
event's in the upcoming fanotify rather than pathnames.  I do however
question if we really want to add yet another syscall for inotify.
We've already seen that inotify is very hard to expand.  The fixed
message length, lack of information a number of users want, and
difficultly in extending those things make me reticent to support more
extentions.

Personally I'd rather see us/you move to fanotify which is (I hope)
extensible forever.  If only I could get networking people to review
it.  Have you looked at fanotify?  I'm going to repost the series in a
couple minutes, maybe you could tell me if fanotify might work for
you?
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