[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

On Mon, 12 Jan 2004, Mike Waychison wrote:



Transparency of an autofs filesystem (as I'm calling it) is the situation
where, given a map

/usr    /man1   server:/usr/man1
        /man2   server:/usr/man2

where the filesystem /usr contains, say a directory lib, that needs to be
available while also seeing the automounted directories.





I see. This requires direct mount triggers to do properly. Trying to do it with some sort of passthrough to the underlying filesystem is a nightmare waiting to happen..




So what are we saying here?

We install triggers at /usr/man1 and /usr/man2.
Then suppose the map had a nobrowse option.


This is a direct map. The browse / nobrowse options do not apply to direct maps.

Does the trigger also take care of hiding man1 and man2?



No. man1 and man2 appear as directories to anyone doing an lstat on them. Traversing *into* them will cause filesystems to be mounted on them. This appears to be similar to browsing of an indirect map at first, however it is a different beast. With indirect maps, we are given the right to cover up /usr to help us detects stats and traversals into its sub-directories. With direct entries, we don't have these leisure. Everything in /usr most be accessible at all times.

Your need for 'transparency' comes from the fact that you convert direct maps into indirect maps, which require the covering of /usr.

Is there some definition of these triggers?



This question is up in the air.

I propose using a magic filesystem, whose root dentry has a follow_link callback defined. When somebody walks into the filesystem, the follow_link is called, which does the mount onto a different dentry, and then forwards the original caller to the new vfsmount/dentry pair.

HPA and Viro believe this is better done in the VFS layer directly by using special vfsmounts without super_blocks. The path walking code would be modified to know of these 'traps' or 'triggers' natively.

Which solution is best is left as an exercise.

--
Mike Waychison
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
1 (650) 352-5299 voice
1 (416) 202-8336 voice
mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.sun.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
NOTICE: The opinions expressed in this email are held by me, and may not represent the views of Sun Microsystems, Inc.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Attachment: pgp00000.pgp
Description: PGP signature

_______________________________________________
autofs mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://linux.kernel.org/mailman/listinfo/autofs

Reply via email to