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[Gnu-arch-users] remove `dev' from inode sigs
From: |
Miles Bader |
Subject: |
[Gnu-arch-users] remove `dev' from inode sigs |
Date: |
29 Jan 2004 10:31:58 +0900 |
Perhaps this has already been discussed, but I think the `dev' field
should be removed from inode signatures (in both {arch} and in revlibs):
they screw up use with NFS (even if the same client mounts the same
filesystem from the same host, the device-number can change!), and
they're not really necessary anyway.
The reason they're not necessary is that it's pretty much guaranteed
that all files in a given tree are on the same device, and that it's the
same device as the inode-signature file that refers to them.
The one case that might be worrying is when you've moved a tree to a new
filesystem, and so the inode numbers might not be valid. I don't think
this is really problem because:
(1) The overwhelming failure mode in such an instance is going to be
false negatives, which are safe
(2) Checking the device-number doesn't guard against this case anyway
(because a new device/filesystem, with different inode numbers, can
have the same device number)
(3) There are other quick heuristics for validating the inode-sig file
that probably have more or less the same success rate as the
device-number, such as simply storing the inode-signature's own
inode-info and making sure it's current
I think device-numbers are really only useful for ensuring two files are
on the same device at a _particular moment in time_.
Thoughts? This little wrinkle is very annoying if you use NFS, and
removing it should be easy... :-)
-Miles
--
"Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that
you do it." Mahatma Gandhi
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