On Wed, 13 Dec 2023, Dave Chinner wrote: > On Wed, Dec 13, 2023 at 08:57:43AM +1100, NeilBrown wrote: > > On Wed, 13 Dec 2023, Dave Chinner wrote: > > > On Tue, Dec 12, 2023 at 09:15:29AM -0800, Frank Filz wrote: > > > > > On Tue, Dec 12, 2023 at 10:10:23AM +0100, Donald Buczek wrote: > > > > > > On 12/12/23 06:53, Dave Chinner wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > > So can someone please explain to me why we need to try to > > > > > > > re-invent > > > > > > > a generic filehandle concept in statx when we already have a have > > > > > > > working and widely supported user API that provides exactly this > > > > > > > functionality? > > > > > > > > > > > > name_to_handle_at() is fine, but userspace could profit from being > > > > > > able to retrieve the filehandle together with the other metadata in > > > > > > a > > > > > > single system call. > > > > > > > > > > Can you say more? What, specifically is the application that would > > > > > want > > > > to do > > > > > that, and is it really in such a hot path that it would be a > > > > > user-visible > > > > > improveable, let aloine something that can be actually be measured? > > > > > > > > A user space NFS server like Ganesha could benefit from getting > > > > attributes > > > > and file handle in a single system call. > > > > > > At the cost of every other application that doesn't need those > > > attributes. > > > > Why do you think there would be a cost? > > It's as much maintenance and testing cost as it is a runtime cost.
You are moving the goal posts. Maintenance is not a cost borne by "every other application". But if you think it is a concern it is certainly worth mentioning. > We have to test and check this functionality works as advertised, > and we have to maintain that in working order forever more. That's > not free, especially if it is decided that the implementation needs > to be hyper-optimised in each individual filesystem because of > performance cost reasons. > > Indeed, even the runtime "do we need to fetch this information" > checks have a measurable cost, especially as statx() is a very hot > kernel path. We've been optimising branches out of things like > setting up kiocbs because when that path is taken millions of times > every second each logic branch that decides if something needs to be > done or not has a direct measurable cost. statx() is a hot path that > can be called millions of times a second..... > > And then comes the cost of encoding dynamically sized information in > struct statx - filehandles are not fixed size - and statx is most > definitely not set up or intended for dynamically sized attribute > data. This adds more complexity to statx because it wasn't designed > or intended to handle dynamically sized attributes. Optional > attributes, yes, but not attributes that might vary in size from fs > to fs or even inode type to inode type within a fileystem (e.g. dir > filehandles can, optionally, encode the parent inode in them). Filehandles are fixed sized. They are one integer in the range 0-128 plus 128 bytes. We know/promise the when the integer is less than 128, trailing bytes of the 128 will all be zero. NeilBRown > > -Dave. > -- > Dave Chinner > da...@fromorbit.com >
