]> err.no Git - linux-2.6/commit
[PATCH] inotify
authorRobert Love <rml@novell.com>
Tue, 12 Jul 2005 21:06:03 +0000 (17:06 -0400)
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@g5.osdl.org>
Wed, 13 Jul 2005 03:38:38 +0000 (20:38 -0700)
commit0eeca28300df110bd6ed54b31193c83b87921443
tree7db42d8a18d80eca538f5b7d25e0532b8fa38b85
parentbd4c625c061c2a38568d0add3478f59172455159
[PATCH] inotify

inotify is intended to correct the deficiencies of dnotify, particularly
its inability to scale and its terrible user interface:

        * dnotify requires the opening of one fd per each directory
          that you intend to watch. This quickly results in too many
          open files and pins removable media, preventing unmount.
        * dnotify is directory-based. You only learn about changes to
          directories. Sure, a change to a file in a directory affects
          the directory, but you are then forced to keep a cache of
          stat structures.
        * dnotify's interface to user-space is awful.  Signals?

inotify provides a more usable, simple, powerful solution to file change
notification:

        * inotify's interface is a system call that returns a fd, not SIGIO.
  You get a single fd, which is select()-able.
        * inotify has an event that says "the filesystem that the item
          you were watching is on was unmounted."
        * inotify can watch directories or files.

Inotify is currently used by Beagle (a desktop search infrastructure),
Gamin (a FAM replacement), and other projects.

See Documentation/filesystems/inotify.txt.

Signed-off-by: Robert Love <rml@novell.com>
Cc: John McCutchan <ttb@tentacle.dhs.org>
Cc: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
24 files changed:
Documentation/filesystems/inotify.txt [new file with mode: 0644]
arch/i386/kernel/syscall_table.S
fs/Kconfig
fs/Makefile
fs/attr.c
fs/compat.c
fs/file_table.c
fs/inode.c
fs/inotify.c [new file with mode: 0644]
fs/namei.c
fs/nfsd/vfs.c
fs/open.c
fs/read_write.c
fs/sysfs/file.c
fs/xattr.c
include/asm-i386/unistd.h
include/linux/fs.h
include/linux/fsnotify.h [new file with mode: 0644]
include/linux/inotify.h [new file with mode: 0644]
include/linux/sched.h
include/linux/sysctl.h
kernel/sys_ni.c
kernel/sysctl.c
kernel/user.c